Let the postmortems begin.

The first week in January brought a barrage of retrospectives on the financial meltdown of 2008, including a few penned by the same big-cheese financial journalists who have already secured correspondingly big book deals. Joe Nocera produced a retrospective on risk management in the New York Times Magazine, while his book-writing buddy, Bethany McLean, spun out a 10,000 word opus on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the glossy pages of February's Vanity Fair. Michael Lewis, following on the heels of "The End," his meltdown saga for December's Portfolio magazine (which New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks recently cited as one of last year's "best examples of long-form journalism and thought") teamed up with short-seller and sometime-author David Einhorn to produce a lengthy op-ed for the Sunday Times under the headline, "The End of the Financial World as We Know It." The author bio on the piece informs us that, yes, Lewis, of "Liar's Poker" fame, is "now writing a book about the collapse of Wall Street." We're shocked.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal delivered its own retrospective on what went wrong, entitled "The End of Wall Street" -- we're sensing a theme here -- not in its pages but through a three-part, public television-style mini-documentary posted on its Web site in which all the talking heads happen to be Journal reporters or editors.

And just when we thought we couldn't read (or watch) another word on the crisis, Fortune magazine's latest edition appeared with its Zeitgeisty cover line, "Sending Wall Street To Jail." Splashed across a background featuring a pair of expensively suited, handcuffed wrists, the line is sure to attract attention; as one of the lawyers quoted in the cover story notes, "There is a long populist tradition in our country that insists on finding villains in any economic downturn."

But many readers might be disappointed. The piece, written by Fortune legal scribe Roger Parloff, takes a systematic look at whether or not top executives at firms such as Bear Stearns Cos., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., American International Group Inc., etc., could be indicted and sent to jail for their roles in their companies' collapses. His conclusion isn't likely to sit well with readers out for Wall Street blood: "To the chagrin of John Q. Public, there will be serious defenses in most of these cases," he warns.

Indeed, the latest crop of crisis retrospectives is marked by a similarly measured, comprehensive, even objective approach. Where many of the earliest pieces on the meltdown wailed about greed, pointed fingers, and identified villains (Alan Schwartz, Dick Fuld, Alan Greenspan, fill-in-the-blank), victims (struggling homeowners) and heroes (Meredith Whitney, Jamie Dimon), this newest wave is more concerned with providing context, sweep and even some good old-fashioned balance. Nocera's piece, for example, explains both the pros and cons of risk management models, as he gives almost equal time to both their boosters -- the folks over at RiskMetrics Group Inc. -- and their naysayers -- specifically, "Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

And while in their op-ed, Lewis and Einhorn assign blame to everyone from the Securities and Exchange Commission to the credit-rating agencies to Henry Paulson for stoking the disaster flames, they also see their actions as part of a larger, more complex, systemic problem.

" 'Greed' doesn't cut it as a satisfying explanation for the current financial crisis," they write. "Greed was necessary but insufficient; in any case, we are as likely to eliminate greed from our national character as we are lust and envy. The fixable problem isn't the greed of the few but the misaligned interests of the many."

Very true. But what does that mean for the avalanche of crisis books that are going to start hitting the shelves a year or so from now? The most beloved business tell-alls, from "Liar's Poker" to "The Predators' Ball," to the genre's ur-example, "Barbarians at the Gate," were mostly about the "greed of the few," which helped them appeal to a mass audience beyond the business-minded.

But this meltdown, with its deep-rooted systemic causes, multiple layers and limited perp walks (at least so far), will be infinitely more difficult to chronicle in a marketable, movie-of-the-week sort of way. It will be fascinating to see what the big cheeses come up with.

Yvette Kantrow is executive editor of The Deal.