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

by Otto Penzler (Editor), Thomas H. Cook (Editor)

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.

Thomas H. Cook is the author of eighteen books, including two works of true crime. His novels have been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Macavity Award and the Dashiell Hammett Prize. The Chatham School Affair won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel in 1996. His true crime book, Blood Echoes, was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1992, and his story "Fatherhood" won the Herodotus Prize in 1998and was included in Best Mystery Stories of 1998, edited by Otto Penzler and Ed McBain. His works have been translated into fifteen languages.

Otto Penzler is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He was publisher of The Armchair Detective, the founder of the Mysterious Press and the Armchair Detective Library, and created the publishing firm Otto Penzler Books. He is a recipient of an Edgar Award for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection and the Ellery Queen Award by the Mystery Writers of America for his many contributions to the field. He is the series editor of The Best American Mystery Stories of the Year. His other anthologies include Murder for Love, Murder for Revenge, Murder and Obsession, The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time, and The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century. He wrote 101 Greatest Movies of Mystery & Suspense. He lives in New York City.

John Berendt is the author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil which spent four years on the New York Times Bestseller list. He has been the editor of New York magazine and an Esquire columnist. He lives in New York.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Crime, Short Stories, Anthologies, Journalism, Essays

512 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 19, 2003

About the author

Otto Penzler is an editor of mystery fiction in the United States, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, where he lives.

Otto Penzler founded The Mysteriour Press in 1975 and was the publisher of The Armchair Detective, the Edgar-winning quarterly journal devoted to the study of mystery and suspense fiction, for seventeen years.

Penzler has won two Edgar Awards, for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection in 1977, and The Lineup in 2010. The Mystery Writers of America awarded him the prestigious Ellery Queen Award in 1994, and the Raven--the group's highest non-writing award--in 2003.

Reviews

[Catten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best American Crime Writing 2003 contains 20 essays that appeared in 2002 on the pages of The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, Texas Monthly, and others. The writing styles vary as widely as the topics. Editors Otto Penzler and Thomas H. Cook note in the book's introduction that the events on September 11, 2001 result in this volume leaning more heavily (but not exclusively) toward international and political events.

Crime occurs constantly and produces varying levels of revulsion, dismay, amusement, or "glad it wasn't me." This collection offers up an array of all of these, plus a little bit of "Huh, I didn't know about that." For example, Peter Richmond's "Big Shot" tells the story of NBA All-Star Jayson Williams-and how limo driver Gus Christofi came to end up shot to death on Jayson's bedroom floor. Richmond paints a picture of Williams that basketball fans might find disagreeable, but he does it with such skill, the reader is left wondering why none of this was discussed on ESPN's SportsCenter. (Williams currently faces a 55-year sentence if convicted of aggravated manslaughter and other charges related to the early-morning 2002 Valentine's Day shooting.)

Marie Brenner's "The Enron Wars" digs deep into the company's family and reveals misogyny, squirrelly cover-ups, decades of smokescreens, and webs of conspiracies. Brenner talks to women from inside the company, who discovered inconsistencies early on and met wall after wall of duplicity and camouflage. These women were smart, driven, dedicated, and successful, and they knew something was wrong but couldn't get answers. It's a great story because it's told from an insider/outsider perspective.

In "The Terrible Boy" Tom Junod takes look at the case of troubled 15-year-old Jonathan Miller, a sophomore who agreed to a fight when his 13-year-old neighbor, Josh Belluardo, challenged him on a school bus. Jonathan sucker punched the larger and more athletic Josh in the back of the head as the two crossed a lawn after leaving the school bus. The fateful punch caused a tiny tear in an artery. Josh went down-and stayed down. Two days later, when Josh's parents took him off life support, the charge against Jonathan Miller changed from aggravated assault to felony murder. And Miller became another poster child for the anti-bullying movement. Junod's treatment of this story is intriguing. It's not just another kid-kills-kid tale. Junod explores bullying, what it is, what is isn't, and his own experience as a bully. He talks intelligently about why Miller wasn't a bully, despite a history of school suspensions and problems in the classroom.

On a more international note, Robert Sam Anson's "The Journalist and the Terrorist," is a harrowing story of a man's attempt to find out what happened to fellow reporter Daniel Pearl. The story opens with a shopping list of rules for a reporter traveling in Karachi, Pakistan: "Do not take a taxi from the airport; arrange for the hotel to send a car and confirm the driver's identity before getting in. Do not stay in a room that faces the street. Do not leave notes or tape recordings in your room. Do not discard work papers in the wastebasket; flush them down the toilet. And above all, do not go alone. Ever." This sets the stage for a fascinating look into Anson's search. He explains the dynamics of the regions politics in a way that is easy to understand. He describes a hatred of Americans that many of us can't fathom and a culture that sometimes feels equally alien. The story is complex and Anson ties the key players and organizations to each other in a well-crafted and widely acclaimed piece of journalism.

Another great story in this volume is Maximillian Potter's "The Body Farm," which tells how Dr. William Bass's forensic exploration project at the University of Tennessee's anthropology department came to be so well known.

This is a great anthology of works, all well-written and all remarkable stories.

[MELISSIA LENOX · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent compilation of stories both known and unknown to me .

[Randy Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Far-Ranging Collection Of International Crime Writing

Though called The Best American Crime Writing, this collection actually has many stories set far outside the United States. There are pieces on prostitution in Eastern Europe, a murder in South America, genocide in Africa, a bombing in the Middle East, and others. Of course the majority of the stories are set in the US, but even many of those are less about the sort of crime usually covered in these books (meaning murder ) and instead focus on things like the Enron scandal, identity fraud, and, again, prostitution. This is not to say the writing isn’t good - it’s first rate - or the stories aren’t interesting - they are - but I would have preferred more stories focused on good old fashioned murderers, especially of the small town variety.

[Scott Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find most anthologies really hit and miss but this installment of the Best American Crime Writing has a higher batting average than most. There was only one piece that I found disappointing, but I won't bother mentioning it since everyone's tastes varies and other people may find it more enjoyable than me. But I do feel like I need to give a shout out to two pieces that I thought were genuinely excellent: Tom Junod's The Terrible Boy and Peter Landesman's horrifying A Woman's Work.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid collection of diverse, often oddball, nonfiction crime stories, with plenty of colorful scumbags to choose from. Some subjects lean more pathetic than interesting, including a dubious gang of drug dealers with stupid nicknames, whereas a few stories, particularly one about a sociopath pro basketball player crossing paths with an innocent victim, really hit home. Another about a young woman impersonating high school kids and manufacturing numerous biographies is equally fascinating.

[Janet Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good in depth detail of some of the big news stories.

[CASPER HILEMAN · Rating 4 out of 5]

True crime writing from 2003, some cases are better written and more interesting than others. (Lawrence Wright) but they are all rather interesting studies in human nature.

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok this anthology of true crime stories, had some fantastic writing and would easily have gotten 5 stars, if the editors had not chosen some really dumb "crimes" to report about.
First off, I'll list the dumb ones, "Sex, Lies & Video Cameras", "How Two Lives Met in Death", "The Terrible Boy", "My Undertaker, My Pimp", "The Bully of Toulon", "A Woman's Work", "Dirty Little Secret", "Big Shot", "Mad Dogs and Lawyers", these stories did not belong among anything considered the "Best" of American Crime Writing, they just did not belong..

The other stories, were: "The Journalist and the Terrorist" (Story about Daniel Pearl), "The Enron Wars" (very well written saga about Enron, I actually learned more about what happened back then), "The Keystone Kommandos" (excellent story, right out of the pages of what should be in history books, this was truly fascinating to learn about), "Murder in the Amazon" (death of Sir Peter Blake), "The Day Treva Throneberry Disappeared" (mind-boggling and in a good way), "Slaves of the Brothel" (learned more about sex slave trafficking, how it works and why its so hard to prevent or prosecute.) "The Last Ride of Jesse James Hollywood" (true crime murder, very sad), "The Body Farm" (one of my favorite authors is a 2-man team known as Jefferson Bass and the star of that Bill Bass, is focused on for this story) "The Boy Who Loved Transit" (why is this guy in jail? seriously, he does a great job!) "The Accused" (kind of a who did it and who got wrongly blamed) "The Counterterrorist" (all I can say is we lost a very good man on 9/11, we lost a lost a lot of people and this is the story of one of them)

[Nellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poignant reminder of the human ability to do terrible things to other humans. It was a good read, definitely some fine crime writing. Being that it is a six year old publication, it brought back to mind some of the horrors of the early 21st century - September 11th, the Rwandan massacres, terrorism, along with the ongoing horrors of the sex trade.

I still recommend that you read this is you enjoy crime writing, as it is a collection of very well written essays. Painful, but well worth the time.

[Peter Lindstrom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most anthologies, some outstanding and some so-so stories—I encountered this book looking up a story that appeared in the Atlantic entitled "The Keystone Kommandos," about the ill-conceived Nazi plan to sabotage the U.S. which lead to the poorly reasoned memo that keeping Gitmo open. Along the way I went down memory lane with Enron, Curtis Thompson of Toulon, IL (google it, if you don't know the story), prosecuting the engineers of the Rwandan genocide & a host of interesting, but far less important stories.

[Ptreick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really great writing here on a variety of crimes. A few seemed rather one-note, but then, I'm reading this book ten years late, and I might be projecting irrelevance on the subject. What I especially loved was the writer's notes at the end; fascinating to see how a story hooks a journalist and simply can't let him/her go until the story is told.

"Terrible Boy" by Tom Junod is an essay I'll be using in my Intro to Lit class this fall. Painfully fantastic.

[Kurt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these true crime pieces are creepy as hell. I've loved most of the books in Penzler's series and have worked my way back through the years of publication. For some reason, this set of tales is full of crazy violence and inhumanity. A few nicely written accounts ... but several Outside magazine and Men's Journal-type hack pieces, too.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is very good writing indeed, about some very sad subjects, including Jayson Williams killing the man who drove his party one night, the dogs that killed the woman in her apartment bldg in San Francisco and sex traffickers in Eastern Europe. I didn't read all of them, eventually I found them too depressing.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

i was recommended this one by my friend joanna who described it as a cross between law & order and the new yorker. if that sounds appealing to you as it did to me i would recommend giving this a try. i will definitely be checking out future editions.

[Kay Sundstrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read these every year except for the last few due to the interference of life. But I like the series, the writing ranges from brilliant to simply ok, but there is one that makes the book worthwhile.

[Joe Noir · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first three volumes in this series, those published in the US by Vintage, were the best. All the volumes in this series are good. Non-fiction crime from a variety of sources, and covering a multitude of sins.

[Sarah Funke]

With Berendt's intro.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really great collection of crime articles from newspapers. I like essays and these were extremely interesting and entertaining, and not in the exact form as true crime books.

[Marianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as last year's. Several stories were not interesting, and the Enron story was confusing. A let down

[Jenny Linsel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this book.Very informative and enlightening insight into the criminal mind.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nicely curated.

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good crop of richly detailed stories. Quite enjoyable.