Selections from The Best American Crime Reporting 2010

by Otto Penzler, Thomas H. Cook

Overview

The Best American Crime Reporting 2010 is yet another must read for the true crime aficionado—an eye-opening compendium of the most gripping, suspenseful, and brilliant crime stories of the year by the masters of the genre. Guest editor Stephen J. Dubner (Freakonomics) joins series editors Otto Penzler and Thomas Cook for the latest annual installment in what Entertainment Weekly has praised as the best mix of “the political, the macabre, and the downright brilliant,” and People Magazine calls, “arresting reading.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062008770
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	07/12/2011
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	596 KB

About the Author

Otto Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop, the founder of the Mysterious Press, the creator of Otto Penzler Books, and the editor of many books and anthologies.

Thomas H. Cook is the author of twenty-three books, including The Chatham School Affair, which won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best novel, and, most recently, The Last Talk with Lola Faye.

Editorial Reviews

From sitting face-to-face with a cartel hitman to an unsolved kidnapping, the stories collected here are some of the best depictions of the worst of humanity. Guest editor Dubner (co-author of Freakonomics) wisely opens with a pair of pieces from long-time New Yorker staff writer Calvin Trillin, which demonstrate the wide scope of the collection: a darkly humorous poem about Roman Polanski's defenders against a statutory rape charge, and a small-town crime story about a Michigan man who gunned down a group of teenagers at a local swimming hole because he had "nothing to lose." Other standouts include Lisa R. Cohen's New York magazine piece about the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz from his SoHo street and the protracted battle to bring his suspected killer to trial; Peter Savodnik's unsettling report from GQ of the Russian serial killer Alexander Pichushkin (known as the "The Maniac"), who was convicted of murdering 48 people but claimed to have killed 63; and Charles Bowden's unnerving account in Harper's of interviewing an assassin who "disappeared" hundreds of people in Mexico. Series editors Otto Penzler and Thomas H. Cook continue to deliver top-notch collections of crime stories big and small. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly