Crime Memoir

From the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police press club: a unique, firsthand, revelatory look at Japanese culture from the underbelly up.

Roger Reaves grew up a poor farm boy in Georgia and went from making 'moonshine' to becoming one of the most prolific smugglers of the 20th century. He covered six continents, transporting 20 ton ship loads of hash, tons of cocaine, and completed more than 100 sorties across the US border with plane loads of marijuana. His friends and associates spanned the globe - from Medellin Cartel kingpins Jorge Ochoa and Pablo Escobar, to "Mr. Nice" Howard Marks and the infamous Barry Seal who was Roger's close friend and employee.

The art world is a much dirtier, nastier business than you might expect. Tony Tetro, one of the most renowned art forgers in history, will make you question every masterpiece you’ve ever seen in a museum, gallery, or private collection. Tetro’s “Rembrandts,” “Caravaggios,” “Miros,” and hundreds of other works now hang on walls around the globe.

A Criminal and an Irishman is the story of Pat Nee's life as an Irish immigrant and Southie son, a Marine, a convicted IRA gun smuggler, and a former violent rival and then associate of Whitey Bulger. His narrative transports the listener into the criminal underworld, inside planning and preparation for an armored car heist, inside gang wars and revenge killings.

If you think you know everything about the East End's toughest gangsters, think again. Meet Linda Calvey, a.k.a. the Black Widow. Growing up in the East End of London, Linda falls in with gangsters including the Krays, Freddie Foreman and Ronnie Cook. When the love of her life, Mickey Calvey, is gunned down on a job gone wrong, Linda resolves to carry on his work. But in 1990, after years of living in fear of her lover Ronnie Cook, Linda finds herself accused of his murder in a trial that shocks the nation. Still, Linda sticks to her code of honour, refusing to confess. Until now.

Baltimore, 2015. Riots are erupting across the city as citizens demand justice for Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year-old Black man who has died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. In this urgent book, award-winning investigative journalist Justin Fenton distills hundreds of interviews, thousands of court documents, and countless hours of video footage to present the definitive account of the entire scandal.

When it first came to the public’s attention in the fall of 1986, the story of the Billionaire Boys Club and its leader, Joe Hunt, a young man labeled a “yuppie Charles Manson” by the prosecutor, was splashed across headlines and TV screens throughout the nation. The story of rich kids, flagrant excess, and multiple murders fascinated the American public, but deeper truths lay buried beneath. The saga was so complex that neither its scope nor its implications could be clearly discerned—that is, until The Price of Experience was published in 1996.

Ken Rex McElroy terrorized the residents of several counties in northwestern Missouri. He raped young girls and brutalized them after they went to live with him or even married him; he shot at least two men; he stole cattle and hogs, and burned down the houses of some who interfered with his criminal activities. Thanks to the expert efforts of his lawyer and the pro-defendant bias of state laws, he served no more than a few days in jail, the author shows.

On June 5, 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart, the daughter of a close-knit Mormon family, was taken from her home in the middle of the night by religious fanatic, Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee. She was kept chained, dressed in disguise, repeatedly raped, and told she and her family would be killed if she tried to escape. After her rescue on March 12, 2003, she rejoined her family and worked to pick up the pieces of her life.

On a cold January morning, the killer executed Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse in broad daylight. Eight shots fired a block from the Kaufman County Courthouse. Two months later, a massacre. The day before Easter, the couple slept. Bunnies, eggs, a flower centerpiece gracing the table. Death rang their doorbell and filled the air with the rat-a-tat-tat of an assault weapon discharging round after round into their bodies. Eric Williams and his wife, Kim, celebrated the murders with grilled steaks. Williams planned to exact revenge on all those who had wronged him.

On May 31, 1985, two days before her high school graduation, Shari Smith was abducted from the driveway of her family home in South Carolina. Based on the crime scene and the abductor’s repeated and taunting calls to the family, law enforcement quickly realized they were dealing with a sophisticated and highly dangerous criminal.

The author of the acclaimed true-crime memoir, The Kill Jar, tells the inside story of the “University of Idaho Murders,” offering a memorable, thoughtful dive into our societal fascination with true crime, the media’s seeming blood-frenzy, and the future of homicide investigations, while cultivating an intimate look into the minds and hearts of the victims and their suspected killer alike.

As an 18-year-old on a gap year in Canberra, Liz Cameron was approached at a shopping centre by a woman who, unbeknownst to her, was a recruiting agent for Providence, a Christian cult that originated in South Korea and currently operates in 72 countries. As a new adult, Cameron was struggling to navigate the world and her identity, and as cults do so skilfully, they took advantage of her vulnerability.

Josef Fritzl was a 73-year-old retired engineer in Austria. He seemed to be living a normal life with his wife, Rosemarie, and their family - though one daughter, Elisabeth, had decades earlier been "lost" to a religious cult. Throughout the years, three of Elisabeth's children mysteriously appeared on the Fritzls' doorstep; Josef and Rosemarie raised them as their own. But only Josef knew the truth about Elisabeth's disappearance.... For 27 years, Josef had imprisoned and molested Elisabeth in his man-made basement dungeon.

From the prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing—and one of the most decorated journalists of our time—twelve enthralling stories of skulduggery and intrigue.

Lurking beneath the progressive activism and sex positivity in the 1970 to '80s, a dark undercurrent of violence rippled across the American landscape. With reported cases of sexual assault and homicide on the rise, the FBI created a specialized team - the “Mindhunters”, better known as the Behavioral Science Unit - to track down the country's most dangerous criminals. And yet narrowing down a seemingly infinite list of potential suspects seemed daunting at best and impossible at worst - until Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess stepped on the scene.

Beginning in 2018, a powerful app for secure communications, called Anom, began to take root among drug dealers and other criminals. It had extraordinary safeguards to keep out prying eyes--the power to quickly wipe data, voice-masking technology, and more. It was better than other apps popular among organized crime syndicates, except for one thing: it was secretly run by law enforcement. Over the next few years, the FBI, along with law enforcement partners in Australia and parts of Europe, got a front row seat to the global criminal underworld.

"A Rose for Her Grave" - the principal story of this collection - vividly recreates the cautionary tale of Randy Roth, a misogynistic sociopath from the Pacific Northwest whose rage was directed primarily at women and children. Addicted to his own greed, Roth exercised a powerful aura of control over his victims, using his ability to charm and boyish good looks to lower their defenses. By the time they saw the reality of the madness in his eyes, it was usually too late.

In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only 29 years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free. But with an incompetent defense attorney and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in despairing silence.

Cuando se pensaba que ya estaba todo dicho sobre Pablo Escobar, aparece este libro sumamente revelador, escrito en clave de vértigo. Quien lo lea se sentirá asistiendo a una sala de cine, oirá los latidos agitados de la Medellín de comienzos de los noventa y verá desfilar a los más disímiles personajes, unidos tras un solo propósito: cazar y dar de baja a Pablo Escobar Gaviria.