Best of
Crime

2003

Blindsighted / Kisscut


Karin Slaughter - 2003
    2 books in 1

Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail


Rusty Young - 2003
    Intrigued, the young Australian journalisted went to La Paz and joined one of Thomas's illegal tours. They formed an instant friendship and then became partners in an attempt to record Thomas's experiences in the jail. Rusty bribed the guards to allow him to stay and for the next three months he lived inside the prison, sharing a cell with Thomas and recording one of the strangest and most compelling prison stories of all time. The result is Marching Powder.This book establishes that San Pedro is not your average prison. Inmates are expected to buy their cells from real estate agents. Others run shops and restaurants. Women and children live with imprisoned family members. It is a place where corrupt politicians and drug lords live in luxury apartments, while the poorest prisoners are subjected to squalor and deprivation. Violence is a constant threat, and sections of San Pedro that echo with the sound of children by day house some of Bolivia's busiest cocaine laboratories by night. In San Pedro, cocaine--"Bolivian marching powder"--makes life bearable. Even the prison cat is addicted.Yet Marching Powder is also the tale of friendship, a place where horror is countered by humor and cruelty and compassion can inhabit the same cell. This is cutting-edge travel-writing and a fascinating account of infiltration into the South American drug culture.

Remember When


Nora Roberts - 2003
    As Nora Roberts, her novels include Three Fates and Birthright. As J. D. Robb, she offers such novels as Portrait in Death. Now she unites her separate identities in a riveting two-part novel that combines edgy suspense and romantic passion - and journeys through past, present, and future.In Part One, Nora Roberts introduces us to Laine Tavish, known to the folks in Angel's Gap, Maryland, as the proprietor of Remember When, an antique treasures and gift shop. They have no idea that she used to be Elaine O'Hara, daughter of the notorious con man Big Jack O'Hara ... or that she grew up moving from place to place, one step ahead of the law. But Laine's past has just caught up with her. Her long-lost uncle has visited her shop, leaving a cryptic warning before dying in the street, run down by a car. Soon afterward, Laine's home is ransacked. Now it's up to her, and an enigmatic stranger named Max Gannon, to find out who's chasing her, and why. The answer lies in a hidden fortune - a fortune that will change Laine's life.In Part Two, J. D. Robb takes us to New York City in 2059, and puts Detective Lieutenant Eve Dallas on the case. The treasure that Laine and Max sought has never been fully recovered. And now someone else is pursuing the missing gems ... someone who's willing to kill for them. Sharp-witted and sexy, Eve is used to traveling in the shadowy corners outside the law, in a future where crime meets cutting-edge technology. She will attempt to track down the diamonds once and for all - and stop the danger and death that have surrounded them for decades.

The Know


Martina Cole - 2003
    She'd do anything to protect them, even resorting to prostitution and petty crime in order to feed and clothe them. So when her beautiful teenage daughter is raped and murdered, only one thing will stop Joanie's pain - seeing her daughter's killer brought to justice. Joanie knows who he is and she'll do whatever it takes to nail him...

Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales


William M. Bass - 2003
    Bill Bass, one of the world's leading forensic anthropologists, gained international attention when he built a forensic lab like no other: The Body Farm. Now, this master scientist unlocks the gates of his lab to reveal his most intriguing cases-and to revisit the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder, fifty years after the fact.

Forget Me Not


Mandasue Heller - 2003
    Lisa Noone, twelve years old, lives too near the lane and her mother is a member of the oldest profession in the book. Their lives are far from perfect, but they will always have each other. Or will they?

Big Jack


J.D. Robb - 2003
    Sharp-witted and sexy, NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas is used to traveling in the shadowy corners outside the law. And in a future where crime meets cutting-edge technology, she will attempt to track down the diamonds once and for all—and stop the danger and death that have surrounded the jewels for years.

The Perfect Husband/The Other Daughter


Lisa Gardner - 2003
    Even locked up in a maximum security prison, he vowed he would come after her and make her pay. Now the cunning killer has escaped—and the most dangerous game of all begins....After a lifetime of fear, Tess will do something she's never done before. She's going to learn to protect her daughter and fight back, with the help of a burned-out ex-marine. As the largest manhunt four states have ever seen mobilizes to catch Beckett, the clock winds down to the terrifying reunion between husband and wife. And Tess knows that this time, her only choices are to kill—or be killed.The Other DaughterWhat you don't know can kill you.In Texas a serial killer is executed, taking to his grave the identity of his only child.In Boston a nine-year-old girl is abandoned in a hospital, then adopted by a wealthy young couple.Twenty years later, Melanie Stokes still considers herself lucky. Until...Until the terrifying visions begin.Until a has-been reporter starts investigating her past.Until the first note arrives saying YOU GET WHAT YOU DESERVE.Melanie had lost all memory of her life before the adoption, and now someone wants to give it back. Even if it includes the darkest nightmare the Stokes family ever faced: the murder of their first daughter in Texas. As Melanie pursues every lead, chases every shadow in the search for her real identity, two seemingly unrelated events from twenty years ago will come together in a dangerous explosion of truth. And with her very life at stake, Melanie will fear that the family she loves the most may be the people she should trust the least.

Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper


Michael Bilton - 2003
    For the first time, the files have been opened, the detectives are talking and the victims are reliving the nightmare. For over 20 years, the dark secrets of the biggest criminal manhunt in British history have remained a closed book. Detectives refused all requests to tell the inside story of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation that logged over two million man-hours of police work. The victims who survived maintained a wall of silence. And the detailed forensic evidence, witness statements and autopsy reports have remained locked away. Until now. Michael Bilton has persuaded the key people to talk. After years of research he can finally reveal the truth behind the murder enquiry that left Peter Sutcliffe free to kill again and again. With exclusive access to the detectives involved, to pathologist's archives and confidential police reports, the story of the hunt is revealed.

Byomkesh Bakshi Stories


Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay - 2003
    This book contains seven of his most entertaining adventures, competently translated. At each reading, one can only marvel at the writer's genius.

The C.J. Sansom CD Box Set: Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign, Revelation


C.J. Sansom - 2003
    J. Sansom. Matthew Shardlake, lawyer and reformist in London during the reign of Henry VIII. His investigation skills are tested in four cases where both his life and the lives of others are threatened. In "Dissolution" he travels to Scarnsea Monastery where one of Thomas Cromwell's Commissioner has been brutally murdered. Shardlake must expose the killer but his inquiries soon force him to question everything he hears, and everything that he intrinsically believes. In "Dark Fire" Shardlake returns to London and a new assignment from Cromwell. The formula for Greek Fire, a legendary Byzantine weapon, is discovered by an official of the Court of Augmentations. Shardlake is sent to retrieve the formula but instead finds the official and his alchemist brother murdered and the formula missing. "Sovereign" takes Shardlake to York, following Henry VIII and his Progress to the North. The murder of a local glazier involves Shardlake in a mystery connected not only to a prisoner in York Castle but to the royal family itself. And in "Revelation" when an old friend is horrifically murdered Shardlake promises his widow to bring the killer to justice. His search leads him to connections with the dark prophecies of the Book of Revelation. Shardlake follows the trail of a series of horrific murders that shakes him to the core, and which are already bringing frenzied talk of witchcraft and a demonic possession - for what else would the Tudor mind make of a serial killer...? Praise for the series: 'Dissolution is a remarkable, imaginative feat. It is a first-rate murder mystery and one of the most atmospheric historical novels I've read in years' - "Mail on Sunday". 'One of the author's greatest gifts is the immediacy of his descriptions, for he writes about the past as if it were the living present' - Colin Dexter.

Monkeewrench


P.J. Tracy - 2003
    Literally. With Serial Killer Detective out in limited release, the real-life murders of a jogger and a young woman have already mimicked the first two scenarios in the game. But Grace McBride and her eccentric Monkeewrench partners are caught in a vise. If they tell the Minneapolis police of the link between their game and the murders, they'll shine a spotlight on the past they thought they had erased-and the horror they thought they'd left behind. If they don't, eighteen more people will die...

Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders


Anna C. Salter - 2003
    "You're so right," they say: "Sexual abuse is an enormous problem, particularly for young teens. Thank God mine aren't there yet."No, sorry, says reality, the most common age at which sexual abuse begins is three."Well sure, if you have homosexuals around small children, there's a risk."No, sorry, says reality, most sexual abuse is committed by heterosexual males."Yeah, but that kind of pervert isn't living in our neighbourhood."Sorry, says reality, but that kind of pervert IS living in your neighbourhood. The Department of Justice estimates that on average, there is one child molester per square mile in the United States."Well, at least the police know who these people are."Not likely, says reality, since the average child molester victimises between 50 and 150 children before he is ever arrested (and many more after he is arrested).When all defenses against reality are taken away, some parents switch to resignation, literally resigning from responsibility: "Well, there's nothing you can do about it anyway." This misplaced fatalism actually becomes fatal for some children.Another common refrain uttered by deniers of the dangers of sexual abuse is: "Well, kids are resilient. When bad things happen, they bounce back."Absolutely not, says reality. Children do not bounce back. They adjust, they conceal, they repress, and sometimes they accept and move on, but they don't bounce back.. (From the foreword written by Gavin de Becker)

Don't Tell


Karen Rose - 2003
    But Mary Grace Winters knew the only way to save herself and her child from her abusive cop husband was to stage their own death. Now all that remains of their former life is at the bottom of a lake. Armed with a new identity in a new town, she and her son have found refuge hundreds of miles away. As Caroline Stewart, she has almost forgotten the nightmare she left behind nine years ago. She is even taking a chance on love with Max Hunter, a man with wounds of his own. But her past is about to collide with the present when her husband uncovers her trail and threatens her hard-won peace. Step by step, he's closing in on her—and everything and everyone she loves.

Shutter Island


Dennis Lehane - 2003
    U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane relentlessly bears down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades—with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. But then neither is Teddy Daniels.

100 Bullets, Vol. 6: Six Feet Under the Gun


Brian Azzarello - 2003
    And behind each individual's story, the war between Shepherd and Graves continues to escalate, and the uneasy alliance of the 13 Families continues to fracture. Featuring an introduction by fan-favorite writer Greg Rucka (WONDER WOMAN, DETECTIVE COMICS)Written by Brian Azzarello; Art by Eduardo Risso; Painted Cover by Dave Johnson Reprinting 100 BULLETS #37-42.

Blinded


KaShamba Williams - 2003
    Being the first person in her family to gain a high school diploma, she has set the tone for greatness. But her prominent future becomes so nebulous that she turns to the streets for guidance and support. She soon realizes that the ''life'' of fast money and frivolous behaviors has not only plagued her, but other family members as well, suffering the same issues that were handed down for generations. In spite of her failed attempts to overcome her problems, she's determined to triumph once again.

Sleep Tight


Anne Frasier - 2003
    DO YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE?He's looking for the perfect woman. Someone who won't disappoint him, like so many have before. Someone who'll love him ... someone who won't have to die for her mistakes.GIVE UP, LITTLE DARLING....FBI agent Mary Cantrell has been called to Minneapolis to hunt down a killer. Her reluctant return home is shaking her to the core, reviving dreadful memories. Years ago, her best friend was murdered. Now the man convicted of the crime, Gavin Hitchcock, is free--and Mary's own sister, Gillian, a local cop, has befriended him.NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM BUT ME.As each clue to the new killings leads them closer to Hitchcock, Mary and Gillian put their differences aside and set themselves up as the perfect target--and the perfect trap. Unless Mary's own past has blinded her to an unimaginable truth ... and will plunge them into a waking nightmare....

The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World's Most Terrifying Murderers


Harold Schechter - 2003
    Now, from the much-acclaimed author of Deviant, Deranged, and Depraved, comes the ultimate resource on the serial killer phenomenon.Rigorously researched and packed with the most terrifying, up-to-date information, this innovative and highly compelling compendium covers every aspect of multiple murderers—from psychology to cinema, fetishism to fan clubs, “trophies” to trading cards. Discover:WHO THEY ARE: Those featured include Ed Gein, the homicidal mama’s boy who inspired fiction’s most famous Psycho, Norman Bates; Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, sex-crazed killer cousins better known as the Hillside Stranglers; and the Beanes, a fifteenth-century cave-dwelling clan with an insatiable appetite for human fleshHOW THEY KILL: They shoot, stab, and strangle. Butcher, bludgeon, and burn. Drown, dismember, and devour . . . and other methods of massacre too many and monstrous to mention here.WHY THEY DO IT: For pleasure and for profit. For celebrity and for “companionship.” For the devil and for dinner. For the thrill of it, for the hell of it, and because “such men are monsters, who live . . . beyond the frontiers of madness.” PLUS: in-depth case studies, classic killers’ nicknames, definitions of every kind of deviance and derangement, and much, much more.For more than one hundred profiles of lethal loners and killer couples, Bluebeards and black widows, cannibals and copycats— this is an indispensable, spine-tingling, eye-popping investigation into the dark hearts and mad minds of that twisted breed of human whose crimes are the most frightening . . . and fascinating.

The White Trilogy


Ken Bruen - 2003
    Collecting A White Arrest (1998), Taming the Alien (1999) and The McDead (2000) for first U.S. publication, this omnibus showcases the investigations of the aging Chief Inspector Roberts and the brutish Detective Sergeant Brant, with the assistance of the unlucky-in-love Woman Police Constable Falls. They don't always solve their assigned crimes, but know perfectly well if they can nail the occasional major criminal-"the white arrest"-they'll be able to keep their jobs. Among numerous subplots, they pursue a serial killer stalking England's winning soccer team, a vigilante gang hanging drug dealers and a hit man known as "The Alien" because he whacked a victim engrossed in the video of that movie with a baseball bat just as the monster pops out of John Hurt's chest. But quieter moments, such as Brant's visit to his home county in Ireland, are just as interesting.

Retribution


Jilliane Hoffman - 2003
    Townsend is a brilliant prosecutor known for keeping her cool even when trying the most horrific cases. The latest: an accused serial killer who savors cruelty and considers murder an art. But this case is different. C.J. recognizes the suspect. She knows what he's capable of. After all these years she still has the nightmares to prove it. Now she's walking a fine line between justice and revenge. Even C.J. isn't prepared for where it will take her.

No Second Chance


Harlan Coben - 2003
    Marc Seidman lies in a hospital bed. His wife has been killed. His six-month-old daughter has vanished. But just when his world seems forever shattered, the ransom note arrives: We are watching. If you contact the authorities, you will never see your daughter again. There will be no second chance. With no one to trust, and mired in a deepening quicksand of deception and deadly secrets, Marc clings to one unwavering vow: bring home his daughter, at any cost.

A Fine Dark Line


Joe R. Lansdale - 2003
    The kids listen idly to rockabilly on the radio and waste their weekends at the Dairy Queen. And an undetected menace simmers under the heat that clings to the skin like molasses... For thirteen-year-old Stanley Mitchell, the end of innocence comes with his discovery of the mysterious long-ago demise of two very different young women. In his quest to unravel the truth about their tragic fates, Stanley finds a protector in Buster Lighthorse Smith, a black, retired Indian-reservation cop and a sage on the finer points of Sherlock Holmes, the blues, and life's faded dreams. But not every buried thing stays dead. And on one terrifying night of rushing creek water and thundering rain, an arcane, murderous force will rise from the past to threaten the boy in a harrowing rite of passage... Vintage Lansdale, A Fine Dark Line brims with exquisite suspense, powerful characterizations, and the vibrant evocation of a lost time.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes


Arthur Conan Doyle - 2003
    From the bizarre job posting in 'The Red-Headed League' to the chilling words uttered by a dying woman in 'The Adventures of the Speckled Band', Sherlock Holmes encounters some of the most twisted cases of his career in this collection of 12 stories.

Beyond Evil: Inside the Twisted Mind of Ian Huntley


Nathan Yates - 2003
    As if his crime was not dreadful enough, he has recently admitted that he lied under oath about the circumstances of one of the murders. This in-depth book is written by investigative journalist Nathan Yates, who witnessed the murder hunt first-hand and even interviewed Huntley his and former girlfriend, Maxine Carr. Yates also has an exclusive source for contact with Ian Huntley, and has further revelations about how far Huntley has lied about what happened that tragic day.

100 Bullets, Vol. 7: Samurai


Brian Azzarello - 2003
    This seventh volume, featuring the story arcs "Chill in the Oven" and "In Stinked," features a new cover by Dave Johnson and an introduction by legendary Argentinean comics writer Carlos Trillo. This 168-page trade paperback returns first to the character of Loop Hughes, who is joined in prison by Lono, and then to Jack Daw, who finds himself in a roadside zoo face to face with several varieties of wild animals - both two - and four-legged!

The Lost Years


Ian Rankin - 2003
    Was the Lord Provost's daughter kidnapped or just another runaway? And why on earth is Rebus invited to a clay pigeon shoot at the home of the Scottish Office's Permanent Secretary? Drawn into the machine that is modern Scotland, Rebus confronts the fact that some of his enemies may be beyond justice. BLACK & BLUE: Rebus is juggling four cases trying to nail one killer - and doing it under the scrutiny of an internal inquiry led by a man he's just accused of taking backhanders from Glasgow's Mr Big. Added to that there are TV cameras at his back investigating a miscarriage of justice, making Rebus a criminal in the eyes of millions of viewers. Just one mistake is likely to mean a slow and unpleasant death or, worse still, losing his job. THE HANGING GARDEN: DI John Rebus is on the trail of a WWII war criminal - until the running battle between two rival gangs on the city streets arrives at his door. When his daughter is the victim of a hit-and-run Rebus is forced to acknowledge that there is nothing he wouldn't do to bring down the prime suspect - even if it means cutting a deal with the devil.

Three Great Novels: Perfect Husband / Other Daughter / Third Victim


Lisa Gardner - 2003
    Even locked up in a maximum security prison, he vowed he would come after her and make her pay. Now the cunning killer has escaped--and the most dangerous game of all begins.... After a lifetime of fear, Tess will do something she's never done before. She's going to learn to protect her daughter and fight back, with the help of a burned-out ex-marine. As the largest manhunt four states have ever seen mobilizes to catch Beckett, the clock winds down to the terrifying reunion between husband and wife. And Tess knows that this time, her only choices are to kill--or be killed. Lisa Gardner sold her first novel when she was 20 years old. In 1993 she graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in international relations. She lives in Rhode Island, where she is at work on her next novel of suspense.

Dissolution


C.J. Sansom - 2003
    At the monastery of Scarnsea, events have spiralled out of control with the murder of Commissioner Robin Singleton. Matthew Shardlake, a lawyer, and his assistant are sent to investigate.

Blackstone and the Rendezvous with Death


Sally Spencer - 2003
     Yet to Inspector Sam Blackstone, the case is as puzzling as any he has ever come across. Why should a corpse dressed the in rags of a commoner have the face of a gentleman? And if this man does belong to noble stock, why has no one come forward to claim the body? As his investigation proceeds, Blackstone finds himself entering the world of the aristocracy—in which the presence of an ordinary policeman is far from welcome—and tramping the dangerous streets of London's Little Russia—where English law and order are not welcome. Death seems to stalk him, and as each new clue leads to nothing more than a new murder, Blackstone comes to realize that he is caught up in what may turn out to be the most horrendous crime of the century… Blackstone and the Rendezvous with Death is an expertly plotted Victorian mystery that will keep readers guessing to the last page. Praise for Sally Spencer: “Spencer's finest hour: a tightly plotted puzzler with surprises at every turn” Kirkus Reviews “Spencer is an accomplished craftsman who serves up a good puzzle and deftly solves it with intelligence and insight” Publishers Weekly “Characters are diverse, intriguing, and believable . . . plots never fail to surprise; and the procedural details are grittily realistic” Kirkus Reviews Sally Spencer worked as a teacher both in England and Iran - where she witnessed the fall of the Shah. She now writes full time. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

Lehane Fiction Collection Six-Book Set


Dennis Lehane - 2003
    Lehane Fiction collection Six-Book Set For a limited time get six of Dennis Lehane's books in one easy-to-order package, including Lahane's now classic Mystic River.

Candlemoth


R.J. Ellory - 2003
    Accused of the horrific murder of his best friend Nathan 12 years before, he has exhausted all appeals and now faces the long walk to the electric chair. All he can do is make peace with his God. Father John Rousseau is the man to whom the last month of Daniel's life has been entrusted. All the two men have left to do is rake over the last ashes of Ford's existence. So he begins to tell his story. Beginning with his first meeting with Nathan, aged 6, on the shores of a lake in 1952, through first loves, Vietnam, the death of Kennedy, and finally their flight from the draft which ended in Nathan's brutal murder.

Sugar & Spice


Keith Lee Johnson - 2003
    The revenge killings begin in the District of Columbia with the murder of the prison warden and his wife -- both found viciously beaten and brutally dismembered -- and to continue on the opposite coast where a socialite is found dead in Malibu. Baffled by the gruesome murders, Detective Phoenix Perry ends her vacation early to conduct an unauthorized investigation and embarks upon a thrilling adventure to unravel the mystery and put end to violence.Sugar & Spice is a gripping race to discover who is behind all of the murder, corruption, and revenge. It is sure to keep readers guessing up to the stunning climax. From a promising new voice in fiction, this novel will keep spines tingling and pages turning.

Carl Hiaasen's South Florida Three-Book Set #2


Carl Hiaasen - 2003
    Carl Hiaasen's South Florida Three-Book Set #2 (Lucky You, Basket Case, Double Whammy) For a limited time get three books in Carl Hiaasen's popular South Florida series together in one easy-to-order package, including the bestseller, Lucky You.

The Monkey's Raincoat / Free Fall / Lullaby Town


Robert Crais - 2003
    The search for Ellen's errant husband leads Elvis into the seamier side of Hollywood. He soon learns that Mort Lang is a down-on-his-luck talent agent who associates with a schlocky movie producer, and the last place he was spotted was at a party thrown by a famous and very well-connected ex-Matador. But no one has seen him since - including his B-movie girlfriend. At the same time the police find Mort in his parked car with four gunshots in his chest - and no kid in sight - Ellen disappears. Now nothing is what it seems, and the heat is on. It's up to Elvis Cole and his partner Joe Pike to find the connection between sleazy Hollywood players and an ex-Matador. FREE FALL Read by James Daniels (Sandra Burr, Jill Sovis) Elvis Cole is just a detective who can't say no, especially to a girl in a terrible fix. And Jennifer Sheridan qualifies: Her fiance, Mark Thurman, is a decorated LA cop with an elite plainclothes unit, but Jennifer's sure he's in trouble - the kind of serious trouble that only Elvis Cole can help him out of. Five minutes after his new client leaves his office, Elvis and his partner, the enigmatic Joe Pike, are hip-deep in a deadly situation as they plummet into a world of South Central gangs, corrupt cops, and conspiracies of silence. And before the case is through, every cop in the LAPD will be gunning for a pair of escaped armed-and-dangerous killers - Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. LULLABY TOWN Read by James Daniels (Joyce Bean, Russell Byers) Hollywood's newest wunderkind is Peter Alan Nelson, the brilliant, erratic director known as the King of Adventure. His films make billions, but his manners make enemies. What the boy king wants, he gets, and what Nelson wants is for Elvis to comb the country for the airhead wife and infant child the film-school flunkout dumped en route to becoming the third biggest filmmaker in America. It's the kind of case Cole can handle in his sleep - until it turns out to be a nightmare. For when Cole finds Nelson's wife in a small Conneticut town, she's nothing like what he expects. The lady has some unwanted - and very nasty - mob connections, which means Elvis could be opening the East Coast branch of his P.I. office . . .at the bottom of the Hudson River.

Hell at the Breech


Tom Franklin - 2003
    His outraged friends -- —mostly poor cotton farmers -- form a secret society, Hell-at-the-Breech, to punish the townspeople they believe responsible. The hooded members wage a bloody year-long campaign of terror that culminates in a massacre where the innocent suffer alongside the guilty. Caught in the maelstrom of the Mitcham war are four people: the aging sheriff sympathetic to both sides; the widowed midwife who delivered nearly every member of Hell-at-the-Breech; a ruthless detective who wages his own war against the gang; and a young store clerk who harbors a terrible secret. Based on incidents that occurred a few miles from the author's childhood home, Hell at the Breech chronicles the events of dark days that led the people involved to discover their capacity for good, evil, or for both.

Devil's Waltz / Bad Love


Jonathan Kellerman - 2003
    He has brought his expertise as a child psychologist to numerous tales of suspense, including fourteen critically acclaimed and bestselling novels featuring child psychologist sleuth Alex Delaware. Now, for the first time, here are two of his popular Alex Delaware books in one volume. Taunt, penetrating, terrifying, Devil's Waltz and Bad Love are Kellerman at his best. From the hospital to the street, Delaware follows mysterious killers in two of the most suspenseful works ever, tracking them down through a combination of keen perception and psychological expertise. In Devil's Waltz, Delaware explores a dark side of parental love. In Bad Love, Delaware follows the twisted logic of a stalker's mind games, aware that next the stalker may be coming for him. In both, weaving a web of disturbing events that will thrill and captivate as he reveals their stunning conclusions.

Stray Bullets, Vol. 7


David Lapham - 2003
    This seventh volume trade paperback reprints issues twenty-five through twenty-eight of the critically acclaimed and Eisner Award winning series - Stray Bullets Truly horrifying The kidnapping and nightmarish search for Virginia Applejack The Collected Stray Bullets Series is a perfect introduction for new readers, a great way for fans to complete the series.

In Silence


Erica Spindler - 2003
    When Avery Chauvin returns to her Louisiana hometown after her father's suicide, she discovers clippings of a fifteen-year-old murder and learns about recent disappearances and murders that lead her to start an investigation.

Inside The Forensic Files of Dr Kathy Reichs


Kathy Reichs - 2003
    

Poirot: The French Collection


Agatha Christie - 2003
    Includes Murder on the Links, Mystery of The Blue Train and Death in The Clouds. It seems Hercule Poirot can never escape murder. Crimes, motives and killers followed him across the Orient and now they have found him again - but this time much closer to home... MURDER ON THE LINKS An urgent cry for help brings Poirot to France. But he arrives too late to save his client, whose brutally stabbed body now lies face downwards in a shallow grave on a golf course. But whay is the dead man wearing his son's overcoat? And who was the impassioned love-letter in the pocket for? Before Poirot can answer these questions, the case is turned upside down by the discovery of a second, identically murdered corpse... THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE TRAIN When the luxurious Blue Train arrives at Nice, a guard attempts to wake serene Ruth Kettering from her slumbers. But she will never wake again - for a heavy blow has killed her, disfiguring her features almost beyond recognition. What is more, her priceless rubies are missing. The prime suspect is Ruth's estranged husband, Derek. Yet Poirot is not convinc

Heart of the Hunter


Deon Meyer - 2003
    Now leading a quiet, ordered life in the countryside, he is reluctantly summoned back into the game when a trusted old friend is kidnapped. With just seventy-two hours to deliver the ransom, with an army of security forces deployed to stop him, and with a diabolical double agent perilously close to assuming absolute power, Tiny races a hijacked motorcycle across the wilds of backcountry Africa in a thrilling epic adventure.

Watch Them Die


Kevin O'Brien - 2003
    From afar he watches the ones he so desperately wants. Willing to do whatever it takes to prove his love. But should his latest obsession betray him, he will have no choice but to punish her.

The Chicago Killer


Joseph R. Kozenczak - 2003
    The conviction of Gacy on 33 counts of murder is significant in the archives of the criminal justice system in the United States. Two articles give the reader a comprehensive insight on the use of psychics and the lie-detector in a serial murder investigation.

Grass


Phil Sparrowhawk - 2003
    Like most punters, he enjoyed an incredible run of luck, but finally rolled the dice once too often.Coming from a family of bookmakers, he wanted to strike out on his own and before he had come of age he had accumulated a small fortune from street trading. He then staked his entire capital on Njinsky in the 1970 Derby - and won. With his now large capital base, he launched a business importing clothes. Enter Howard Marks (aka Mr Nice), who was enthused by Phil's Far East connections and introduced him to the far more lucrative world of the 'movement of beneficial herbs' - or, as it is known to the authorities, drug smuggling. Phil struck out on his own and from his new base in Thailand became involved in many large-scale cannabis deals while at the same time developing highly successful legitimate businesses. Sailing close to the wind became Phil's preferred choice of travel through life. Read of his encounters with Greenpeace, Mother Teresa, gangsters and leading politicians, Lord Moynihan, religious cults, former pop singers and many other diverse characters as his life became more and more surreal. The winning streak came to an end in 1988 when the US Drug Enforcement Agency closed in. Phil's 30m fortune was promptly confiscated and he spent the next four years in two of Thailand's most notorious jails before being extradited to the US,

Murder on the Orient Express / Death on the Nile / The Mirror Cracked / The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Agatha Christie Boxed Set)


Agatha Christie - 2003
    

The Innocents


Taryn Simon - 2003
    Simon photographed these innocents at sites of particular significance to their illegitimate conviction: the scene of the crime, misidentification, arrest, or alibi. Simon’s portraits are accompanied by a commentary by Neufeld and Scheck.

Inside Track


John Francome - 2003
    The perfect read for fans of Felix Francis' Pulse and Triple Crown. 'There are some genuinely exhilarating descriptions of races that capture the tension and excitement, and could be written only with a jockey's insight' - Daily Mail Pippa Hutchinson is an aspiring young trainer, certain that given the right horses she is as good as anyone in the business. Until, that is, an owner removes two horses to another yard, and one shows dramatic improvement. She enlists the help of her brother, Jamie, once a star flat jockey, now trying to revive his racing career over fences after a harrowing term in prison. But former wild boy Jamie has his own demons to deal with, like the new challenge of jumps riding, the hostility of those who can never forgive him for a young lad's death - and the black wall within him that separates him from his past. What readers are saying about Inside Track: 'The best book he [John Francome] has written so far''An outstanding, compelling book from start to finish''Well written, well-paced and the way he portrays the differing characters is astounding'

And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank


Steve Oney - 2003
    The girl’s murder would be the catalyst for an epic saga that to this day holds a singular place in America’s collective imagination—a saga that would climax in 1915 with the lynching of Leo Frank, the Cornell-educated Jew who was convicted of the murder. The case has been the subject of novels, plays, movies and even musicals, but only now, with the publication of And the Dead Shall Rise, do we have an account that does full justice to the mesmerizing and previously unknown details of one of the most shameful moments in the nation’s history.In a narrative reminiscent of a nineteenth-century novel, Steve Oney recounts the emerging revelations of the initial criminal investigation, reconstructs from newspaper dispatches (the original trial transcript mysteriously disappeared long ago) the day-to-day intrigue of the courtroom and illuminates how and why an all-white jury convicted Frank largely on the testimony of a black man. Oney chronicles as well the innumerable avenues that the defense pursued in quest of an appeal, the remarkable and heretofore largely ignored campaign conducted by William Randolph Hearst and New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs to exonerate Frank, the last-minute commutation of Frank’s death sentence and, most indelibly, the flawlessly executed abduction and brutal lynching of Frank two months after his death sentence was commuted.And the Dead Shall Rise brings to life a Dickensian cast of characters caught up in the Frank case—zealous police investigators intent on protecting their department’s reputation, even more zealous private detectives, cynical yet impressionable factory girls, intrepid reporters (including a young Harold Ross), lawyers blinded by their own interests and cowed by the populace’s furor. And we meet four astonishing individuals: Jim Conley, who was Frank’s confessed “accomplice” and the state’s star witness; William Smith, a determined and idealistic lawyer who brilliantly prepared Conley for the defense’s fierce cross-examination and then, a year later, underwent an extraordinary change of heart; Lucille Frank, the martyred wife of the convicted man; and the great populist leader Tom Watson, who manipulated the volatile and lethal outrage of Georgians against the forces of Northern privilege and capital that were seeking to free Frank.And the Dead Shall Rise also casts long-awaited fresh light on Frank’s lynching. No participant was ever indicted, and many went on to prominent careers in state and national politics. Here, for the first time, is the full account of the event—including the identities of the influential Georgians who conceived, carried out and covered up the crime. And here as well is the story of the lynching’s aftermath, which saw both the revival of the Ku Klux Klan and the evolution of the Anti-Defamation League.At once a work of masterful investigative journalism and insightful social history, And the Dead Shall Rise does complete justice to one of history’s most repellent and most fascinating moments.

Bummy Davis vs. Murder, Inc.: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Mafia and an Ill-Fated Prizefighter


Ron Ross - 2003
    But as much as he resisted the underworld of Murder, Inc. by becoming a championship fighter and a Brownsville hero, he never did escape the Jewish Mob's shadow. Though he repeatedly stood up to mob kingpins, Bummy suffered a spectacular fall from grace as a result of a smear campaign by the press. Ron Ross' Bummy Davis vs. Murder, Inc. is not just about one Jewish boxer, his meteoric rise to fame, and victimization by the press. Bummy's life was intertwined with the Great Depression, the survival of the Brooklyn Jewish immigrant population during Prohibition, and the inevitable offshoot of Prohibition-Murder Inc., one of American history's most notorious band of killers. Ron Ross portrays an important historical time period, an enigmatic Jewish subculture, and the surprising juxtaposition of a generation of Jews and their talent for boxing.Bummy Davis vs. Murder, Inc. features a cast of colorful villains whom you'll love to hate, a boxing legend who was the unwitting pawn of fate, and the human drama of the boxing world. With his vivid, street-smart Damon Runyonesque writing style, Ron Ross redeems a tragic hero who fought the pull of one of the most brutal groups of killers to grace the twentieth century.

Conversations with a Pedophile: In the Interest of Our Children


Amy Hammel-Zabin - 2003
    The mind of a pedophile who confessed to sexually abusing more than one thousand boys is revealed in a series of letters to the author, a music therapist he met while incarcerated and a victim of childhood sexual abuse herself.

Omnibus: Twice Shy / The Danger


Dick Francis - 2003
    

Scream at the Sky: Five Texas Murders and One Man's Crusade for Justice


Carlton Stowers - 2003
    Within weeks, a second woman was found-her brutalized body dumped in the frozen Texas plains. Over the next seventeen months three more women would fall victim to a faceless evil, fueling the city's fears and baffling authorities whose every lead came to a dead end. For one haunted man the case would never die.A fight for justice as cunning and relentless as the killer himself...Almost fourteen years to the day of the first murder, ambitious investigator John Little reopened the cold-case files determined to deliver closure to the victims' friends and families, and bring a killer to justice. Working on his instincts, following every imaginable clue, Little embarked on an ingeniously clever and exhaustive cat-and-mouse game to trap an elusive serial killer whose sick fantasies would finally be silenced forever.

The Sins Of Their Fathers


Gilda O'Neill - 2003
    Tough, violent and proud, Gabriel O'Donnell has fought his way up from poor Irish roots to run the gambling, prostitution and protection empire that makes him rich, and that one day his boys, Brendan and Luke, will take over.It's not easy to love a man when violent crime is his career, as Eileen O'Donnell knows, so she's invested everything in her children: icy cool Brendan; Luke, who hates the horror of gang warfare; irrepressible Catherine with her verve for life; and Patricia, married to a man whose brainless viciousness is close to madness.Then Kessler turns up. An enemy from the old days, he's got plans to move in on Gabe O'Donnell's turf. But Gabe swears he will see him burn in hell before that happens, no matter how much blood gets spilt. It's that obsession which leads to a tragedy that changes all their lives...A spellbinding novel of the sixties underworld, full of menace and darkness, The Sins of Their Fathers will grip you to the end as two families are locked in a ruthless struggle of money, love and pride, determined to win no matter what the cost.

A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial


Suzanne Lebsock - 2003
    Suspicion soon falls on a young black sawmill hand, who tries to flee the county. Captured, he implicates three women, accusing them of plotting the murder and wielding the ax. In vivid courtroom scenes, Bancroft Prize-winning historian Suzanne Lebsock recounts their dramatic trials and brings us close to women we would never otherwise know: a devout (and pregnant) mother of nine; another hard-working mother (also of nine); and her plucky, quick-tempered daughter. All claim to be innocent. With the danger of lynching high, can they get justice?Lebsock takes us deep into this contentious, often surprising world, where blacks struggle to hold on to their post-Civil War gains against a rising tide of white privilege. A sensation in its own time, this case offers the modern reader a riveting encounter with a South in the throes of change.

Without Pity: Ann Rule's Most Dangerous Killers


Ann Rule - 2003
    Now, she updates the most astonishing cases from that acclaimed series—and presents shocking, all-new true-crime accounts—in one riveting anthology. In every explosive chapter of Without Pity, Ann Rule deepens her unrelenting exploration of the evil that lies behind the perfect facades of heartless killers...and the deadly compulsions of greed and power that shatter their outward trappings of material success. They are the admired, trusted neighbor; the affable family man; the sexy, charismatic lover; the high-achieving professional. Perhaps most frightening of all is that they are heroes in their own minds. But when someone gets in the way of their deluded dreams, they are capable of deadly acts of violence with no remorse. Analyzing the true nature of the sociopathic mind in chilling detail, Ann Rule traces the murderous crimes of seemingly ordinary men—killers who drew their unsuspecting victims into their twisted worlds with devastating consequences.

Guns and Roses: The Untold Story of Dean O'Banion, Chicago's Big Shot Before Al Capone


Rose Keefe - 2003
    Based on information compiled from police and court documents, contemporary news accounts, and interviews with O'Banion's friends and associates, Guns and Roses traces O'Banion's rise from Illinois farm boy to the most powerful gang boss ...

Fuckin' Lie Down Already


Tom Piccirilli - 2003
    He always played by the rules until a two-bit junkie hit man destroyed his family and left him for dead. But Clay won't let himself lie down until he gets one last thing: revenge

The Best American Crime Writing: 2003 Edition: The Year's Best True Crime Reporting


Otto Penzler - 2003
    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.

Sky Full of Sand


Rick DeMarinis - 2003
    Bleak, brutal, demented and cruel, the El Paso world inhabited by Uriah Walkinghorse shocks the system, sets nerve-ends tingling, numbs, then drags you into its thrall. Uri is suspended somewhere between a "normal" existence and a descent into the bizarre and desperate world that surrounds him. Strained but strong ties still bind him to his odd assortment of adopted siblings-black and white and Korean-who include a school principal, an addict, a delivery driver and a corporate lawyer. At 42, he has lost his wife, abandoned his quest for a master's and manages derelict apartments of derelicts in exchange for rent. His one accomplishment was a bodybuilding title, Mr. West Side, and he still maintains a diet and exercise program. DeMarinis's exceptionally sharp wit slashes through the prose as Uri undertakes an odyssey through a world of kinky sex, drugs, high finance and the most vicious, most wasted dregs of humanity on either side of the border. The argument between a huffer and a doper over which addiction is better is brilliantly macabre. Alternately trapped and fueled by futile dreams of a better life, Uri stumbles, perseveres and survives. DeMarinis somehow manages to invest even the most degenerate of characters with recognizable humanity in spite of his savage and bitter satire.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Harvey and Lee: How the CIA Framed Oswald


John Armstrong - 2003
    CD has high resolution photographs for researchers and historians to study.

The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial


John H. Langbein - 2003
    For centuries defendants were forbidden to have legal counsel, and lawyers seldom appeared for the prosecution either. Trial was meant to be an occasion for thedefendant to answer the charges in person.The transformation from lawyer-free to lawyer-dominated criminal trial happened within the space of about a century, from the 1690's to the 1780's. This book explains how the lawyers captured the trial. In addition to conventional legal sources, Professor Langbein draws upon a rich vein ofcontemporary pamphlet accounts about trials in London's Old Bailey. The book also mines these novel sources to provide the first detailed account of the formation of the law of criminal evidence.Responding to menacing prosecutorial initiatives (including reward-seeking thief takers and crown witnesses induced to testify in order to save their own necks) the judges of the 1730's decided to allow the defendant to have counsel to cross-examine accusing witnesses. By restricting counsel to thework of examining and cross-examining witnesses, the judges intended that the accused would still need to respond in person to the charges against him. Professor Langbein shows how counsel manipulated the dynamics of adversary procedure to defeat the judges design, ultimately silencing the accusedand transforming the very purpose of the criminal trial. Trial ceased to be an opportunity for the accused to speak, and instead became an occasion for defense counsel to test the prosecution case.

Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand


Jello Biafra - 2003
    

When The Bough Breaks: The True Story Of Child Killer Kathleen Folbigg


Matthew Benns - 2003
    She killed her four children over 10 years. Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura Folbigg died one by one over a 10-year period in similar circumstances - suddenly, unexpectedly and while sleeping. Each was discovered by Kathleen, their mother, who raised the alarm to her husband, Craig, that they were not breathing. When the Folbiggs' marriage fell apart six weeks after the death of their fourth child, Laura, Craig was devastated. It only got worse when he discovered Kathleen's diary in her bedside drawer. Horrified at his wife's ramblings about losing control with the children, her 'terrible thoughts' and her fears she was her 'father's daughter', he took the diary to the police. The diary was the crucial evidence Detective Bernie Ryan had been searching for to confirm his suspicions that the babies had been murdered. With his career and credibility on the line, he made the decision to charge Kathleen Folbigg with the murder of her four innocent babies. No one who knew Kathleen could believe she had murdered her own children. Yet few knew of her tragic past - the fact that her own father had stabbed her mother to death four decades earlier. When The Bough Breaks exposes the secret life of Australia's worst convicted female serial killer, a woman jailed for the unthinkable crime of killing her own children. It raises important issues about parents who do not feel emotionally attached to their children and about the diagnosis of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome as a cause of death.

Bad Men


John Connolly - 2003
    The dead ones. They were dead, but they had lights. Why do the dead need light?Three hundred years ago, the settlers on the small Maine island of Sanctuary were betrayed to their enemies and slaughtered. Since then, the island has known peace. Until now. A gang of four men are descending on Sanctuary, intent on committing a brutal and relentless massacre. All that stands in their way are rookie police officer Sharon Macie and the strange, troubled officer Joe Dupree.But Joe is no ordinary policeman. He knows the island has been steeped in blood once and that it will never again tolerate the shedding of innocent blood. The band of killers who are set to desecrate Sanctuary will unleash the fury of its ghosts upon themselves and all who stand by them. On Sanctuary, all hell is about to break loose ...

Perversions of Justice: Indigenous Peoples and Anglo-American Law


Ward Churchill - 2003
    has consistently employed a corrupt from of legalism as a means of establishing colonial control and empire. Along the way, he demonstrates how this "nation of laws" has so completely subverted the law of nations that the current America-dominated international order ends up, like the U.S. itself, functioning in a manner diametrically opposed to the ideals of freedom and democracy it professes to embrace.By tracing the evolution of federal Indian law, Churchill is able to show how the premises set forth therein not only spilled over onto non-Indians in the U.S., but were also adapted for application abroad. The trajectory of America’s imperial logic can be followed all the way to the present New World Order. Churchill provides a point-by-point indictment of America's behavior, and offers a view of how things might work if even the minimum requirements of international law were complied with.

Primal Spillane


Mickey Spillane - 2003
    This edition is limited to 100 copies signed by Spillane, Collins and Myer, Jr.

Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know


Ben Rothke - 2003
    "The employee handbook for securing the workplace"--Cover.

Where the Money Is: True Tales from the Bank Robbery Capital of the World


William J. Rehder - 2003
    Rehder, the man CBS News once described as "America's secret weapon in the war against bank robbers," chronicles the lives and crimes of bank robbers in today's Los Angeles who are as colorful and exciting as the legends of long ago. The mild-mannered antiques dealer who robbed more banks than anyone else in history. The modern Fagin who took a page out of Dickens and had children rob banks for him. The misfit bodybuilders who used a movie as a blueprint for a spree of violent robberies.In a fast-paced, hard-edged style that reads like a novel, Where the Money Is carries us through these stories and more—all within a pistol shot of Hollywood, all true-life tales as vivid as anything on the big screen.

We'll Always Have Murder: A Humphrey Bogart Mystery


Bill Crider - 2003
    Their investigation takes them to glamorous restaurants like The Brown Derby where the stars go to be seen, and to other, darker, more dangerous places where names are changed and faces are hidden from public view. As Bogie and Terry dig deeper, they uncover too many secrets that someone doesn't want known, and they find themselves the targets of a killer. Getting through alive will take all the smarts, toughness and grit of a character in a Humphrey Bogart movie!

Laughing Boy's Shadow


Steven Savile - 2003
     I never thought I was monster. My life changed overnight. I was driving home from a gig when a tramp stepped out in front of my car. I killed him. I know I did. But no-one believed me. The medical staff at the hospital insisted he was the result of some sort of hallucination because trauma sustained during the accident. I tried to convince them otherwise, but the more I protested, the more obvious it became to them that I had damaged more than just my ribs in the crash, so I started to lie to keep them happy. I pretended he wasn't there. But he was. He was everywhere. And he was determined to destroy my life and take away everything I loved in revenge. How do you fight a monster no-one else can see? This is what he reduced my life to. I am stopped being Declan Shea that night and became someone else entirely. I became a monster. Laughing Boy's Shadow, International bestselling author Steven Savile's debut novel is a document humane charting the descent of an ordinary man into a murky world of very human monsters, grief and madness as he wrestles to come to terms with who he is and just what he is capable of in the name of love. Published in the US, Sweden and recently sold to Germany, this is Laughing Boy's Shadow's first appearance in Savile's native land. "A story about Death written by a man who has clearly consorted with devils.” -- T.M. Wright, author of A Manhattan Ghost Story "A raw, gritty novel: part social commentary, part philosophy, part fantasy. Savile handles his episodes of graphic violence skillfully, eschewing cliches and shock tactics in favor of understated, detached narration, and the result is a genuinely chilling portrait of total alienation. Savile's novel is original, smart, and well-written; his disturbing images and bleak prose and both thought-provoking and genuinely unsettling." -- Rue Morgue "The tale is compelling. The protagonist Declan Shea’s transformational journey through the underground; his confrontation with the marvellously named Crohak and the Rookery; the iconic imagery cheerfully interwoven with allusions cribbed from L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll and Joseph Campbell make for a dark intriguing sojourn through a mythic urban landscape of bewildering wonderment." -- Fear Zone

Blood Highways


Adam L. Penenberg - 2003
    At the center of the story are two people: Tab Turner, a charismatic trial attorney from Arkansas, who has made a career out of forcing Ford and other automakers to own up to knowingly trade human lives for profits; and Donna Bailey, a single mother and outdoor enthusiast who fought back from the brink of death to confront those ultimately responsible for her accident. Weaving together harrowing depictions of the accidents and their consequences with the stories of the men and women who labor to police the auto industry and its reckless cost-cutting, Blood Highways will transform the way you view corporations, the government, the courts, and the media. Above all, this book shows the price the public pays in wrecked and mangled lives when companies focus more on shaving costs than making quality products.

Alchemy of Bones: Chicago's Luetgert Murder Case of 1897


Robert Loerzel - 2003
    Although no body was found, Chicago police arrested her husband, Adolph, the owner of a large sausage factory, and charged him with her murder. The eyes of the world were still on Chicago following the success of the World's Columbian Exposition, and the Luetgert case, with its missing victim, once-prosperous suspect, and all manner of gruesome theories regarding the disposal of the corpse, turned into one of the first media-fueled celebrity trials in American history. Newspapers fought one another for scoops, people across the country claimed to have seen the missing woman alive, and each new clue led to fresh rounds of speculation about the crime. Meanwhile, sausage sales plummeted nationwide as rumors circulated that Luetgert had destroyed his wife's body in one of his factory's meat grinders. In this narrative history of the Luetgert case, Robert Loerzel brings 1890s Chicago vividly back to life. He examines not only the trial itself but also the police department and forensic specialists investigating the case, the reporters scrambling for details, and the wider society who followed their stories so voraciously. Weaving in strange-but-true subplots involving hypnotists, palmreaders, English con-artists, bullied witnesses, and insane-asylum body-snatchers, Alchemy of Bones is more than just a true crime narrative; it is a grand, sprawling portrait of a city--and a nation--getting an early taste of the dark, chaotic twentieth century.

The Brass Ring


Mavis Applewater - 2003
    Jamie Jameson comes face to face with the woman who, 12 years earlier, broke her heart, and now she must deal with the confusion and danger.

Hell's Prisoner: The Shocking True Story Of An Innocent Man Jailed For Eleven Years In Indonesia's Most Notorious Prisons


Christopher V.V. Parnell - 2003
    A world where murder, torture and fights to the death are the norm. Where the guards turn a blind eye to the lethal weapons prisoners carry . . . and use almost daily.Hell's Prisoner is the powerful story of one man's battle to survive in some of the world's cruellest and most inhumane prisons. Christopher Parnell, wrongly accused of drug trafficking, found himself catapulted into the maelstrom of madness and degradation that exists within Indonesian jails. Surrounded by murderers and sadistic violent criminals, he soon learned that life can be as cheap as a bowl of rice or a cigarette.During his imprisonment, Parnell was subjected to unthinkable sessions of torture, both physical and psychological. Left to starve and fight every day for his survival, he was forced to eat everything from cockroaches to human flesh.This is an incredible tale of fatalism and bureaucracy, of corruption and the horrors of prison, but most of all it is a no-holds-barred account of what the human spirit can endure.

Introduction to Crime Analysis: Basic Resources for Criminal Justice Practice


Deborah Osborne - 2003
    The tragedy of September 11, 2001, has raised awareness on how crucial it is to analyze information and intelligence. Smaller agencies that cannot financially justify hiring a full-time analyst will find strategies and techniques to teach officers the methods of analysis. Introduction to Crime Analysis: Basic Resources for Criminal Justice Practice provides basic tools and step-by-step directions that will improve the skills and knowledge of new crime analysts.From the editors: "Military strategists have used analysis for centuries; it makes sense to know as much as possible about the enemy and about the conditions and causes of a situation if we hope to institute any kind of significant change for the better. Career criminals are the enemies of a community's well being. Now that advances in information technology give us the means and methods to fully examine and find meaningful knowledge in the vast amounts of existing information on crimes and criminals, we have an obligation to use our technological strength to protect innocent people. Systematic crime analysis as a law enforcement and public safety asset has become not only possible, but also truly necessary as a weapon in the war against crime."Along with defining the various roles of the crime analyst, Introduction to Crime Analysis demonstrates how to:improve the personal skills necessary to make you a good crime analystsuccessfully work through the five stages--collection, collation, analysis, dissemination, and feedback and evaluation--of analysisselect the appropriate crime mapping software for your agencyevaluate the usefulness of your crime analysis productsbenefit from email discussion groups and professional associationscreate a crime analysis unit-including policies and procedures as well as marketing and fundingThis clearly written resource includes case studies, figures, and appendixes that will simplify the learning process. Links to Internet pages also offer resources and information beneficial to both new and experienced crime analysts. Introduction to Crime Analysis will benefit crime analysts, police officers, intelligence analysts, community groups focused on crime prevention, criminal justice students, and police departments and sheriff's agencies.

Into the Darklands


Nigel Latta - 2003
    He takes us inside the minds of some of the most chilling characters to walk our streets.

Through Survivors' Eyes: From the Sixties to the Greensboro Massacre from the Sixties to the Greensboro Massacre


Sally Avery Bermanzohn - 2003
    Eighty-eight seconds later, five demonstrators lay dead and ten others were wounded. Four TV stations recorded their deaths by Klan gunfire. Yet, after two criminal trials, not a single gunman spent a day in prison. Despite this outrage, the survivors won an unprecedented civil-court victory in 1985 when a North Carolina jury held the Greensboro police jointly liable with the KKK for wrongful death.In passionate first-person accounts, Through Survivors' Eyes tells the story of six remarkable people who set out to change the world. The survivors came of age as the protest generation, joining the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. They marched for civil rights, against war, for textile and healthcare workers, and for black power and women's liberation. As the mass mobilizations waned in the mid-1970s, they searched for a way to continue their activism, studied Marxism, and became communists.Nelson Johnson, who grew up on a farm in eastern North Carolina in a family proud of its African American heritage, settled in Greensboro in the 1960s and became a leader of the Black Liberation Movement and a decade later the founder of the Faith Community Church. Willena Cannon, the daughter of black sharecroppers, witnessed a KKK murder as a child and was spurred to a life of activism. Her son, Kwame Cannon, was only ten when he saw the Greensboro killings. Marty Nathan, who grew up the daughter of a Midwestern union organizer and came to the South to attend medical school, lost her husband to the Klan/Nazi gunfire. Paul Bermanzohn, the son of Jewish Holocaust survivors, was permanently injured during the shootings. Sally Bermanzohn, a child of the New York suburbs who came south to join the Civil Rights Movement, watched in horror as her friends were killed and her husband was wounded.Through Survivors' Eyes is the story of people who abandoned conventional lives to become civil rights activists and then revolutionaries. It is about blacks and whites who united against Klan/Nazi terror, and then had to overcome unbearable hardship, and persist in seeking justice. It is also a story of one divided southern community, from the protests of black college students of the late 1960s to the convening this January of a Truth and Community Reconciliation Project (on the South African model) intended to reassess the Massacre.

Surviving Frank


David A. Page - 2003
    Ryan is human, promoted to detective by Internal Affairs. His first assignment is to investigate Frank's methods. Posing as the werewolf's new partner, wrestling with his own guilt and insecurities as a cop and as a spy, he assists Frank in a murder investigation while simultaneously gathering evidence against him. As Ryan and Frank search for answers, they discover that the governor could be the next target in a string of murders. With the politics of Boston hanging in the balance, the partners must tolerate one another long enough to find the killer before he can strike again.

An Expendable Man: The Near-Execution of Earl Washington, Jr.


Margaret Edds - 2003
    He spent almost 18 years in Virginia prisons--9 1/2 of them on death row--for a murder he did not commit.This book reveals the relative ease with which individuals who live at society's margins can be wrongfully convicted, and the extraordinary difficulty of correcting such a wrong once it occurs.Washington was eventually freed in February 2001 not because of the legal and judicial systems, but in spite of them. While DNA testing was central to his eventual pardon, such tests would never have occurred without an unusually talented and committed legal team and without a series of incidents that are best described as pure luck.Margaret Edds makes the chilling argument that some other "expendable men" almost certainly have been less fortunate than Washington. This, she writes, is "the secret, shameful underbelly" of America's retention of capital punishment. Such wrongful executions may not happen often, but anyone who doubts that innocent people have been executed in the United States should remember the remarkable series of events necessary to save Earl Washington Jr. from such a fate.

The Cornish Novels Omnibus


Janie Bolitho - 2003
    Always willing to lend a helping hand to those in need, Rose often finds herself drawn into the oddest situations. Of course, being naturally curious, Rose finds it very hard to let an unsolved puzzle pass her by, even when the consequences of her actions mean her own tranquil lifestyle becomes somewhat stormy...With a cast of colourful characters and the beautiful county of Cornwall as the backdrop, this omnibus edition brings together for the first time three engrossing mysteries featuring amateur sleuth Rose Trevelyan - Snapped in Cornwall, Buried in Cornwall and Framed in Cornwall.

Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime


Eric W. Hickey - 2003
    The Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime includes nearly 500 entries that range from Antisocial Personality Disorder and the Beltway Snipers to the infamous Zodiac Murders. Entries take several formats, including: substantial essays on criminal terms, pathologies, and criminal justice concise case studies of serial murderers, infamous crimes, and their investigations relatively brief definitions of relevant legal and criminological terms.The Encyclopedia is written by an impressive group of contributors, many leading experts in their fields of criminology, criminal justice, and more. Extra features such as a handy, easy-to-use Reader′s Guide, a lavish art program of approximately 50 photographs, and several appendixes enhance and complete the volume. This valuable reference is designed for academic, school, public, and special/private libraries as well as criminal justice agencies.

The Unknown Darkness: Profiling the Predators Among Us


Gregg O. McCrary - 2003
    A former Supervisory Special Agent in the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, Gregg McCrary takes us deep into the minds of the nation's shrewdest and most sinister predators. In The Unknown Darkness, he digs beneath the crime scene to examine in raw first-person detail the lethal competition between the country's deviously dangerous killers and the dedicated professionals who are determined to get them off the streets.In the basement offices of the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia -- now familiar from the books and films The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal -- McCrary served in one of the most elite forces for criminal investigation in the world, profiling criminals for over twenty-five years in more than a thousand cases involving homicide, serial murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault. He takes us inside his process on some of his most fascinating cases, including:The Sam Sheppard case -- In revisiting this classic case, what new material did McCrary's analysis discover?The Poet's Shadow -- The strange story of Jack Unterweger and the hunt for an international serial killer that had a bizarre twist.The Buddhist Temple Massacre -- What did the crime scene reveal about the shocking evil that resulted in the deaths of nine gentle people?The Unknown Darkness also explores the strengths and pitfalls of modern criminal investigation and offers vivid details about what happens at a crime scene, what is actually involved in bringing a killer to justice, and finally what kind of a person is able to devote his or her life to grappling with the predators among us. Daring to relive the often harrowing experiences of his time with the FBI, McCrary has put together an eye-opening account of ten of America's most frightening and riveting manhunts. He has also written an engrossing narrative on our justice system -- from the perspective of someone who has lived it day to day.

Evil Under the Sun (Hercule Poirot #23)


Michael BakewellRobin Ellis - 2003
    But with the appearance of the beautiful Arlena Stuart, the quiet and peaceful atmosphere becomes charged with an indefinable erotic tension. And when she is found viciously strangled in a secluded cove, there are few, especially among the women, who seem to feel either surprise or regret. As Poirot follows a twisting path of bizarre and bewildering clues, his only certainties are that the solution lies within Arlena herself, and that there is evil under the sun.John Moffatt is Hercule Poirot in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatization by Michael Bakewell with an all-star cast including Iain Glen, Fiona Fullerton, Robin Ellis, Wendy Craig, George Baker and Joan Littlewood.1/5 Can't a Belgian sleuth have a holiday in Devon without getting embroiled in a murder?2/5 When an American starlet is found dead, Poirot has a hotel full of suspects to investigate3/5 There are suspects-a-plenty, witchcraft and a love-letter for the sleuth to investigate.4/5 Hercule Poirot makes a chance discovery in a nearby cove. Stars John Moffat.5/5 Determined to pinpoint the killer, Hercule Poirot invites all his suspects to a picnic.

Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America


Laura Wexler - 2003
    In Walton County, Georgia, a mob of white men commit one of the most heinous racial crimes in America's history: the shotgun murder of four black sharecroppers -- two men and two women -- at Moore's Ford Bridge. Fire in a Canebrake, the term locals used to describe the sound of the fatal gunshots, is the story of our nation's last mass lynching on record. More than a half century later, the lynchers' identities still remain unknown. Drawing from interviews, archival sources, and uncensored FBI reports, acclaimed journalist and author Laura Wexler takes readers deep into the heart of Walton County, bringing to life the characters who inhabited that infamous landscape -- from sheriffs to white supremacists to the victims themselves -- including a white man who claims to have been a secret witness to the crime. By turns a powerful historical document, a murder mystery, and a cautionary tale, Fire in a Canebrake ignites a powerful contemplation on race, humanity, history, and the epic struggle for truth.

Ballad of a Ghetto Poet


A.J. White - 2003
    Raised on the harsh, brutal language of the streets, Chicko hears the music of God in the poetry he writes. But God is noticeably absent when he falls in with a sly and dangerous criminal who draws Chicko and his best friends Malcolm and Junnie into the city's violent underworld of crime. Filled with the rage and pathos of the streets, eloquent in its anguished portrait of life in the forgotten corners of the South, Ballad of a Ghetto Poet delivers a modern-day interpretation of West Side Story. This is a tragic and heroic tale of desperate hope and lost chances, and of what happens when redemption comes too late.

On The Trail Of Bonnie And Clyde Then And Now


Winston G. Ramsey - 2003
    Full description

The Bullet or the Bribe: Taking Down Colombia's Cali Drug Cartel


Ron Chepesiuk - 2003
    streets with cocaine, ruining neighborhoods and lives while reaping millions in cash. Efforts to combat the influx of drugs from Colombia were often stymied by the careful organization and execution of the drug trade. Through the use of bribery, terrorist structures, and legitimate business practices, the cartel rose to become a serious threat to Colombian society's fragile stability, while providing over 70% of the world's cocaine to various markets. It took more than two decades and a global effort, spearheaded by U.S. law enforcement, to topple this notorious criminal organization.The rise and fall of one of Colombia's most notorious drug cartels is a story of how organized crime can function at the most sophisticated levels, yet still be taken down by the very forces it seeks to evade. This book vividly examines the Cali Cartel, providing unique insight into the history of international trafficking, organized crime, and U.S. drug policy. Relying on first hand accounts, interviews, and DEA records, Chepesiuk brings the story to life, illustrating how drug traffickers operate and why they are so difficult to stop. In detailing law enforcement's biggest takedown, this book describes how such transnational criminal organizations must be dismantled, and why drug trafficking continues to be an important problem in the United States. The fall of the cartel also provides lessons for law enforcement efforts to combat terrorists and other formidable criminal organizations.

Cyber Crime


Andrew Grant-Adamson - 2003
    Discusses how technology has developed a new type of criminal, discussing the crimes and motives, and what is being done about these cyber crimes.

The Box & Journey Into Terror


Peter Rabe - 2003
    But that's when boss Ryder had him stuffed into a crate and shipped around the world. The box is opened in the North African town of Okar, and what emerges is barely human. But once Quinn recovers, he discovers he has a new chance at life. JOURNEY INTO TERROR: There was a botched robbery and John Bunting's fiance is killed. The cops weren't going to do anything, so he sets out to find the killers himself. That's when he meets Linda, who's just lost her husband. Two wounded souls, one filled with hate, the other with pain--it's funny how much they needed each other.

Death By Drowning and Other Stories (Agatha Christie Reader vol. 2)


Agatha Christie - 2003
    CD1 Death by Drowning (read by Joan Hickson) - an architect stands accused of murdering an unmarried mother-to-be.The Plymouth Express (read by David Suchet) - the body of a millionaire's daughter is found under a train seat.CD2 The Lamp (read by Christopher Lee) - in a haunted house, a young boy discovers an invisible playmate.The Case of the Missing Lady (read by James Warwick) - an arctic explorer asks Tommy and Tuppence Beresford to find his missing fiancee.

Inside the Shadow Government: National Emergencies and the Cult of Secrecy


Harry Helms - 2003
    Original.

The Hit and the Marksman


Brian Garfield - 2003
    The Hit is a full-length novel that ranks with the best of man-on-the-run stories. In this instance, the running man happens to be Simon Crane, who made the mistake of appearing to have double-crossed the Mafia. The novel resonates with all the "inside look" feel of "The Sopranos" as Crane and a beautiful-but-mysterious woman look for three million dollars and the killer who framed him for a Mob murder. "The Marksman" is an original novelette, never published anywhere else, that is a crime and adventure story in the best Brian Garfield tradition -- a race against the clock, double- and triple-crosses, and a breathtaking confrontation that makes the ending one you'll never forget.

Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me


Declan Lynch - 2003
    That is, until he hits the big time. One of his tunes is recorded by the boy band Fellaz and tops the charts in almost every country worldwide. Freddie suddenly finds himself with money - a lot of money. And so begins Freddie's quest to support the musicians with 'real' talent, in particular, the sax player Bricks Melvin. What he can't see, is that Bricks is just happy to have a roof over his head, especially when the beautiful Nadine, Freddie's daughter, is under that same roof. With a fist full of cash, and a head full of good intentions, Freddie hasn't reckoned on Bricks' sinister motives. But when the only thing more precious to him than the music is threatened, Freddie realises that not even money can protect his family.

Philadelphia's Black Mafia: A Social and Political History


Sean Patrick Griffin - 2003
    Academicians in the fields of criminology, sociology, history, political science and African-American Studies will find the book compelling and important. This book provides the first sociological analysis to date of Philadelphia's infamous "Black Mafia" which has organized crime (with varying degrees of success) in predominantly African-American sections of the city dating back to the late 1960's. Philadelphia's 'Black Mafia' -is a first step in developing both data and sophisticated theoretical propositions germane to the ongoing study of organized crime; -uses primary source documents, including confidential law enforcement files, court transcripts and interviews; -explores the group's activities in detail, depicting some of the most notorious crimes in Philadelphia's history; -thoroughly examines the organization of the Black Mafia and the group's alliances, conspiracies and conflicts; -challenges many of the current historical and theoretical assumptions regarding organized crime.

Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70


John H. Laub - 2003
    Born in Boston in the late 1920s and early 1930s, these men were the subjects of the classic study Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck (1950). Updating their lives at the close of the twentieth century, and connecting their adult experiences to childhood, this book is arguably the longest longitudinal study of age, crime, and the life course to date.John Laub and Robert Sampson's long-term data, combined with in-depth interviews, defy the conventional wisdom that links individual traits such as poor verbal skills, limited self-control, and difficult temperament to long-term trajectories of offending. The authors reject the idea of categorizing offenders to reveal etiologies of offending--rather, they connect variability in behavior to social context. They find that men who desisted from crime were rooted in structural routines and had strong social ties to family and community.By uniting life-history narratives with rigorous data analysis, the authors shed new light on long-term trajectories of crime and current policies of crime control.

When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry


Joan Petersilia - 2003
    Largely uneducated, unskilled, often without family support, and with the stigma of a prison record hanging over them, many if not most will experience serious social and psychological problems afterrelease. Fewer than one in three prisoners receive substance abuse or mental health treatment while incarcerated, and each year fewer and fewer participate in the dwindling number of vocational or educational pre-release programs, leaving many all but unemployable. Not surprisingly, the greatmajority is rearrested, most within six months of their release. What happens when all those sent down the river come back up--and out?As long as there have been prisons, society has struggled with how best to help prisoners reintegrate once released. But the current situation is unprecedented. As a result of the quadrupling of the American prison population in the last quarter century, the number of returning offenders dwarfsanything in America's history. What happens when a large percentage of inner-city men, mostly Black and Hispanic, are regularly extracted, imprisoned, and then returned a few years later in worse shape and with dimmer prospects than when they committed the crime resulting in their imprisonment? Whattoll does this constant churning exact on a community? And what do these trends portend for public safety? A crisis looms, and the criminal justice and social welfare system is wholly unprepared to confront it.Drawing on dozens of interviews with inmates, former prisoners, and prison officials, Joan Petersilia convincingly shows us how the current system is failing, and failing badly. Unwilling merely to sound the alarm, Petersilia explores the harsh realities of prisoner reentry and offers specificsolutions to prepare inmates for release, reduce recidivism, and restore them to full citizenship, while never losing sight of the demands of public safety.As the number of ex-convicts in America continues to grow, their systemic marginalization threatens the very society their imprisonment was meant to protect. America spent the last decade debating who should go to prison and for how long. Now it's time to decide what to do when prisoners come home.

The Craze


Paul Southern - 2003
    She was found on the tracks: burned up, tongue cut out, a finger removed. Who was she? 24 hours earlier Shazia Ahmed was leaving Manchester, but a chance meeting and a phone call and she finds herself in the underworld where life is cheap and usually very short. Jamie Farrell already knows this truth: that the drugs and crime will tip over into murder. His father's in Strangeways and he'll be joining him. But he can't give up the deadly game that is The Craze. Dru Round thought his big day had come: no more cheap drag acts and furtive sex in the backs of cars. A new dawn of TV fame beckoned. But he just needed that extra score to make things work for him-Three lives - one crime - the Craze.

Slayer of Innocence


Jim Conover - 2003
    More than 16 young boys throughout the Midwest, California, Oklahoma and Arizona had disappeared under very similar circumstances and at least 14 had been discovered murdered. This pedophile predator had made the Midwest his killing field from 1972 until 1979 when a handful of dedicated lawmen finally caught his track. These lawmen, from 7 states and many different agencies, joined forces to hunt this predator down before he could kill again. Slayer of Innocence is a true narrative account of that desperate struggle.

Dark and Tangled Threads of Crime: San Francisco's Famous Police Detective, Isaiah W. Lees


William B. Secrest - 2003
    Lees discovered his great talent for solving crimes and catching criminals. He captured stage robbers in Missouri, tracked con men to New York and caught the notorious eastern bank robber, Jimmy Hope in the middle of a San Francisco heist.San Francisco in the 1850’s, was the gateway to the gold fields, a city filled with adventurers, outlaws, con men and desperadoes of every description. In 1853 Isaiah Lees was appointed the first Chief of Detectives on the new Police Force and during nearly fifty years he acquired an amazing record. An innovator of police methods, Lees easily eclipsed such legendary lawman as Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp. When he retired as chief in 1900, the San Francisco Chronicle stated that “in point of service, no one has ever equaled the record of Lees.” He was the right man, in the right place, at the right time, and this is his exciting, true story, told here for the first time.