"True Detective" has been accused of plagarism. Here's the story.

Mike Davis, the editor of The Lovecraft eZine, collaborated with Thomas Ligotti Online founder Jon Padgett to find similarities between Rust Cohle's dialogue in "True Detective"  and a Thomas Ligotti book called "The Conspiray Against the Human Race." The team found nearly a dozen instances in which Cohle's dialogue seemed to be cribbed from Ligotti; you can compare them for yourself at The Lovecraft eZine.

"As I reviewed Jon's research, and did more of my own, any doubts I had about plagiarism disappeared," Davis writes. "It became obvious to me that Pizzolatto had plagiarized Thomas Ligotti and others - in some places using exact quotes, and in others changing a word here and there, paraphrasing in much the same way that a high school student will cheat on an essay by copying someone else's work and substituting a few words of their own."

Pizzolatto has previously acknowledged Ligotti's influence on the show. "I read The Conspiracy Against the Human Race and said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. "For me as a reader, it was less impactful as philosophy than as one writer's ultimate confessional: an absolute horror story, where the self is the monster. In episode one [of True Detective] there are two lines in particular (and it would have been nothing to re-word them) that were specifically phrased."

Specifically one of the scenes in question is the car ride dialogue between Cohle and Woody Harrelson's Marty Hart from the first episode. As Padgett says, "It is the scene in which True Detective goes from being just another cop buddy procedural to something different, something of exceeding interest to HBO's audience and a credit to the writer who created Rustin Cohle."

Padgett does a lot of complicated who said what when and how type of work. Long story short, Padgett concluded that Pizzolatto was trying not to talk about Ligotti and only responded when directly questioned about him.

It's an accusation that has already inspired fierce debate, as to where exactly the line between homage and plagarism lies. There is also the question of whether or not merely taking Ligotti's book and turning it into a show, the act of translation itself being a creative act, makes plagiarism impossible.

While it may not be enough to go to court on, it is enough to call into quesiton Pizzolatto's responsibility for the greatness of "True Detective." In Ligotti's case, Padgett and Davis definitely believe it's the latter. Their case is laid out here for you to draw your own conclusion.