From Publishers Weekly
Penzler and Cook's annual compendium of crime journalism showcases 20 essays on some notorious cases, as well as some major criminal justice and political issues, by well-known writers such as Scott Turow and James Ellroy and public figures such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Three pieces that first saw daylight in the pages of
Atlantic Monthly stand out: Kennedy's defense of Michael Skakel, which will lead many open-minded readers to reasonable doubt about his guilt in the murder of Martha Moxley; James Fallows's "Who Shot Mohammed Al-Dura?," which challenges the conventional wisdom that the 12-year-old Palestinian boy killed in the early days of the second intifada was the victim of Israeli snipers; and
Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden's "The Dark Art of Interrogation," a discussion of coercive interrogation tactics that is especially timely given the Iraqi prison abuse scandal. The authorial commentaries that follows some of the articles give perspectives that would have been useful for all 20. The lack of a single piece on white-collar crime during a peak period of corporate corruption is regrettable. Still, the variety of subject matter and tone makes this an easy and thought-provoking read. Guest editor Joseph Wambaugh provides an introduction.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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From Booklist
The third installment in this excellent annual series of nonfiction crime writing comprises 20 pieces culled from last year's issues of the
New Yorker,
esquire, and
Vanity Fair, among other publications. As with the previous editions, this volume covers a good range of topics, including Jon Krakauer's profile of fundamentalist terrorism, not in the Middle East but rather in a small, prosperous community in central Utah, and Elizabeth Franck's study of a child-porn case involving a law school professor in New York. The perhaps unintended centerpiece here is Scott Turow's provocative look at the ethics of capital punishment; once an advocate of the death penalty, Turow explains how in the last two years he has reversed his position. "The quality of the writing is what matters most," the editors write in the preface. Quality here really means detail through exhaustive legwork. Joseph Wambaugh's introduction is a quirky but revealing essay on the severe legal risks these writers and their magazines face in publishing pieces such as these. A worthy successor to the first two volumes.
Alan MooresCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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