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.

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.

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 gazetteer of American noir."- Daily Telegraph In the summer of 1989 John Williams donned a baseball cap and took off for the States to search out the mythical America of modern crime fiction-to find James Ellroy's Los Angeles, Elmore Leonard's sleazy South Beach of Miami, Sara Paretsky's Chicago, and many others on a tour of the American underbelly. The result was Into the Badlands, a riveting collection of interviews. In 2005 Williams returned to discover that much had changed in the intervening years, both in crime writing and in America as a whole. As Williams crosses America in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he finds himself in a profoundly uneasy country. Whether their territory is inner-city DC, like George Pelecanos, or the rural white poverty of the Ozark Hills, like Daniel Woodrell, the best crime writers today are sending dispatches from the edge. John Williams brings their visions together to construct a powerful, personal portrait of America today. Includes interviews with James Lee Burke, James Ellroy, James Crumley, Sara Paretsky, Eugene Izzi, Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins, Vicki Hendricks, Kem Nunn, Kinky Friedman, Daniel Woodrell, and George P. Pelecanos.

A great recurring character in a series you love becomes an old friend. You learn about their strange quirks and their haunted pasts and root for them every time they face danger. But where do some of the most fascinating sleuths in the mystery and thriller world really come from? What was the real-life location that inspired Michael Connelly to make Harry Bosch a Vietnam vet tunnel rat? Why is Jack Reacher a drifter? How did a brief encounter in Botswana inspire Alexander McCall Smith to create Precious Ramotswe? In The Lineup, some of the top mystery writers in the world tell about the genesis of their most beloved characters -- or, in some cases, let their creations do the talking.

The best mystery and crime fiction ever produced by African-American writers. Contributors to the collection include Robert Greer, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Cary Phillips, Frankie Bailey, and Richard Wright.

Derived from a series launched in 2003 by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, called Passports to Crime, this volume collects stories from some of the world's most popular and talented crime writers. Originally published monthly in Ellery Queen, these stories are appearing for the first time in book form. Authors include: Boris Akunin, a major bestseller in Russia, who has many other works translated in the U.S.; Ingrid Noll, Germany's "Queen of Crime," whose books have been translated into 23 languages and adapted for German television; Ruben Fonseca, one of Brazil's best-known literary figures; Baantjer, the most widely read author in the Netherlands, with over 5 million books sold in a country with a population of 15 million; Paul Halter, the winner of two of France's coveted literary awards; France's most admired author of traditional mysteries — Dominic Manotti, a winner of the French Crime Writers Association prize for best thriller; and Rene Appel, three-time winner of the Netherlands' Jouden Strop Prize