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This year’s worth of the most powerful, the most startling, the smartest and most astute, in short, the best crime journalism. Scouring hundreds of publications, Otto Penzler and Thomas H. Cook have created a remarkable compilation containing the best examples of the most current and vibrant of our literary traditions: crime reporting. Included in this volume are Maximillian Potter’s “The Body Farm” from GQ, a portrait of Murray Marks, who collects dead bodies and strews them around two acres of the University of Tennessee campus to study their decomposition in order to help solve crime; Jay Kirk’s “My Undertaker, My Pimp,” from Harper’s, in which Mack Moore and his wife, Angel, switch from run-ning crooked funeral parlors to establishing a brothel; Skip Hollandsworth’s “The Day Treva Throneberry Disappeared” from Texas Monthly, about the sudden disappearence of a teenager and the strange place she turned up; Lawrence Wright’s “The Counterterrorist” from The New Yorker, the story of John O’Neill, the FBI agent who tracked Osama bin Laden for a decade—until he was killed when the World Trade Center collapsed. Intriguing, entertaining, and compelling reading, Best American Crime Writing has established itself as a much-anticipated annual.
Thieves, liars, killers, and conspirators—it's a criminal world out there, and someone has got to write about it. An eclectic collection of the year's best reportage, The Best American Crime Reporting 2007 brings together the murderers and muscle men, the masterminds, and the mysteries and missteps that make for brilliant stories, told by the aces of the true crime genre. This latest addition to the highly acclaimed series features guest editor Linda Fairstein, the bestselling crime novelist and former chief prosecutor of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office's pioneering Special Victims' Unit.
A riveting new anthology series—a year’s worth of the most powerful, the most startling, the smartest and most astute, in short, the best crime journalism. Scouring hundreds of publications, guest editor Nicholas Pileggi, and series editors Otto Penzler and Thomas H. Cook have created a remarkable compilation of the best examples of the most current and vibrant of our literary traditions: crime reporting. Ranging in style from Mark Singer’s ribald “The Chicken Warriors,” an up-close look at the tawdry, wildly popular, illegal world of cock-fighting, to David McClintick’s harrowing “Fatal Bondage,” the tale of a grifter with an attraction to sado-masochistic sex and serial killing, this collection showcases the wide variety of writing in the field today. Criminal behavior itself also falls into a spectrum, from the isolated and idiosyncratic misdeed, such as that documented in Skip Hollandsworth’s “The Killing of Alydar,” an investigation into the greed that spawned the killing of a thoroughbred horse, to the large-scale malignancies that can shake an entire nation, as recounted in “The Day of the Attack,” Nancy Gibbs’s sobering retelling of the events of September 11, 2001. Good crime writing is never just about the crime or the criminals, so this collection also has moving and often troubling portraits of the victims, their families, and the communities in which they lived, and, in pieces such as D. Graham Burnett’s “Anatomy of a Verdict,” a reminder of the immensely difficult process that is coming to judgment. Entertaining, at times alarming, Best American Crime Writing is compelling evidence of the furthest reaches of human behavior.
From the Edgar Award–winning author of Red Leaves: An “intelligent and elegant” thriller in the grand tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene (The Wall Street Journal). When the body of famed true-crime writer Julian Wells is found in a boat drifting on a Montauk pond, the question is not how he died, but why? Philip Anders, Wells’s best friend and literary executor, vows to find out what drove the enigmatic author to take his own life. The first clue is a map of Argentina that Wells had been examining on the day he died. Years ago, he and Anders made a fateful trip to Buenos Aires, where their tour guide was a woman named Marisol. Her subsequent disappearance during Argentina’s Dirty War haunted the author. Had he discovered some new clue to her fate? Was he planning to return to South America? And what, if anything, does Marisol’s disappearance have to do with the curious dedication in Wells’s first book: “For Philip, sole witness to my crime”? Anders soon finds himself on a journey into his friend’s haunted, secret life. Spanning four decades and traversing three continents, The Crime of Julian Wells is a “spellbinding” tour-de-force from one of America’s most acclaimed suspense novelists (Publishers Weekly). “[A] striking example of a suspense writer working at the top of his form, and an agreeable diversion for those who enjoy a bit of style with their substance . . . Cook’s characterizations are richly balanced and finely nuanced.” —Los Angeles Times
An anthology of the best mystery short stories published in 2017 selected by best-selling author Louise Penny.
On the eve of WWII, an international plot leads to a deadly obsession: “Nobody tells a story better than Thomas H. Cook” (Michael Connelly, New York Times–bestselling author of Two Kinds of Truth). It’s 1939 and the world is on the brink of war, but Thomas Danforth is in New York City living a fortunate life. The well-traveled son of a wealthy importer, he’s in his twenties and running the family business, looking forward to a bright future. Then, during a snowy evening walk along Gramercy Park, a friend makes a fateful request—and involves Thomas in a dangerous idea that could change the fates of millions. Thomas is to provide access to his secluded Connecticut mansion, where a mysterious woman will receive training in firearms and explosives. Thus begins an international plot carried out by the strange and alluring Anna Klein—a plot that will ensnare Thomas in more ways than one. When it all goes wrong and Anna disappears, he will travel far from home once again, but this time, into a war-torn world that is far more dangerous, in this story by an Edgar Award–winning author known for his “piercing thrillers” (New York Daily News). “No other suspense writer takes readers as deeply into the heart of darkness as Thomas H. Cook.” —Chicago Tribune
This “beautifully written and elegantly plotted” thriller from the Edgar Award–winning author of The Chatham School Affair is “one of his best ever” (The Globe and Mail, Toronto). Twenty years ago, Ray Campbell was a well-intentioned aid worker dedicated to improving conditions in Lubanda, a newly independent African country. Now a cautious risk-management consultant, he is forced to reconsider that year of living dangerously when an old friend is found murdered in a New York alley. Signs suggest that this recent tragedy is rooted in a more distant one—that of Martine Aubert, the only woman Ray ever loved, whose fate he’d sealed with a grievous mistake: “In Rupala, twenty years before, I had rolled the dice for a woman who was not even present at the table, and how on the outcome of that toss, a braver and more knowing heart than mine had been forfeited.” Martine Aubert was a white, native Lubandan farmer whose dream for her homeland put her in conflict with fearsome men intent on its so-called development. As Ray returns to Lubanda to investigate the cause of his friend’s murder, he also revisits the passion he’d once felt for Martine and vows, in her memory, to rectify his wrongs. A Dancer in the Dust is a gripping story of ill-fated love: one man’s love for an extraordinary woman, and one woman’s love for her troubled country. “Not since John Le Carré’s The Mission Song have I seen such a loving and sorrowful portrait of modern Africa.” —The News & Observer (Raleigh)
A “marvelously tense” novel of psychological suspense centered on a long-ago crime of passion, from an Edgar Award–winning author (Publishers Weekly, starred review). With dreams of academic greatness, Lucas Paige rose from humble and sordid beginnings to attend Harvard. But his achievements since then have been meager. In St. Louis to give yet another sparsely attended reading, he discovers a face from the past he’s tried to forget: Lola Faye Gilroy, the “other woman” he long blamed for his father’s murder. Reluctantly, Luke joins Lola Faye for a drink. As one drink turns into several, these two battered souls relive, from their different perspectives, the most searing experience of their lives. They are transported back to the tiny southern town of Glenville, Alabama, where a violent crime of passion is turned in the light once more. As it turns out, there is much Luke doesn’t know. And what he doesn’t know can hurt him. Trapped in an increasingly intense exchange, Luke struggles to gain control and determine what Lola Faye is truly after—before it is too late. This “darkly powerful” (Kirkus Reviews) literary thriller, rich with Southern atmosphere, is “a knockout” (People). “Cook continues his work as one of the best fiction writers in America.” —The Plain Dealer
An “eerily poignant novel” about a grieving father and a cold-case mystery, from an Edgar Award winner (PublishersWeekly, starred review). George Gates used to be a travel writer who specialized in places where people disappeared—Judge Crater, the Lost Colony. Then his eight-year-old son was murdered, the killer never found, and Gates gave up disappearance. Now he writes stories of redemptive triviality about flower festivals and local celebrities for the town paper, and spends his evenings haunted by the image of his son’s last day. Enter Arlo McBride, a retired missing-persons detective still obsessed with the unsolved case of Katherine Carr. When he gives Gates the story she left behind—a story of a man stalking a woman named Katherine Carr—Gates too is drawn inexorably into a search for the missing author’s brief life and uncertain fate. And as he goes deeper, he begins to suspect that her tale holds the key not only to her fate, but to his own. “Every Thomas H. Cook novel is a subtle mind game, but The Fate of Katherine Carr is positively haunting.” —The New York Times Book Review “Disturbing, psychologically complex . . . At each level, the novel ponders questions of good and evil, of guilt and retribution, and the power of storytelling itself.” —Associated Press
Jack Branch, the last son of an aristocratic Old South family, has returned to his hometown, taking on the job of teacher at the local high school. When he sets his students a paper entitled 'The Most Evil Person', he expects essays on historical tyrants and literary villains. He doesn't expect Eddie Miller's choice - his own father. Throughout his life, Eddie has been known as 'The Coed Killer's Son', because when Eddie was eight years old, his father killed a local college student, dismembered her body, and buried the pieces in a local forest. Eddie's investigation of his own father's dark secrets steadily widens until, ultimately, it encompasses the whole town.