This is a smorgasbork of violencek

October 5, 2010 9:08 AM

The 2010 Best American Crime Reporting anthology is out. (Although not available for Kindle as was last year's.) The smorgasbord includes a poem by Calvin Trillin.

Along with:

Lisa R Cohen - What Happened to Etan Patz? (New York)
After thirty years a father believes he knows who killed his child.

Pamela Colloff - Flesh and Blood (Texas Monthly)
The seemingly perfect child kills her family.

Peter Savodnik - The Chessboard Killer (GQ)
A look at one of the most prolific serial killers.

Maximillian Potter - The Great Buffalo Caper (5280)
The complicated history of a commissioned piece of art.

Ernest B. Furgurson - The Man Who Shot The Man Who Shot Lincoln (The American Scholar)
The fate of the soldier who shot John Wilkes Booth.

David Kushner - The Boy Who Heard Too Much (Rolling Stone)
A blind teenager takes telephone pranks to a new level.

Skip Hollandsworth - Bringing Down the Dogmen (Texas Monthly)
Undercover cops versus dog-fighters. (free registration required)

Subscription required:

Charles Bowden - The Sicario (Harper's Magazine)
Confessions of a Juarez hit-man.

Calvin Trillin - At the Train Bridge (The New Yorker)
Three teenagers are murder at a Michigan train bridge.

Ron Chernow - Madoff and His Models (The New Yorker)
The predecessors to Madoff

Jeffrey Toobin - The Celebrity Defense (The New Yorker)
More on Polanski

In the anthology but not available online:

Rick Anderson - Smooth Jailing (Seattle Weekly)
not online - seems to be cited in several places as best of.

Kevin Gray - Sex, Lies, & Videotape (Details)
The world's greatest playboy conman. Not available online.

Previously on the blue:

Nadya Labi - The Snatchback (The Atlantic)
A specialist in retrieving children kidnaped in custody battles.

David Grann - Trial by Fire (The New Yorker)
The execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.

posted by dances_with_sneetches (18 comments total)

Some brief commentary. As in previous years some articles are available online while others are not. I don't have much of problem with that. With the financial challenges facing journalism nowadays whatever method they choose to keep a reasonable revenue flowing is a perilous decision. I would say though, they should put their absolute best pieces online, makes for a great advertising. And why not have a less costly subscription where I could view 20 articles per year? This would get me to subscribe for some magazines that I would otherwise pass over.
Previously. And previously.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:15 AM on October 5, 2010

Excellent. Thanks.
posted by rtha at 9:32 AM on October 5, 2010

Thank you. At least one of these is stunning. I think I might slap Nebraska on, and get my maudlin going.
posted by Ahab at 9:40 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

I had forgotten about that RS article on Weigman.

Mind blowing.
posted by Bathtub Bobsled at 9:43 AM on October 5, 2010

Skip Hollandsworth is one of the best crime writers out there — nay, one of the best writers out there, period. If you get a chance, read through his anthology at Texas Monthly. Fantastic.
posted by good day merlock at 10:06 AM on October 5, 2010

C'mon Harcourt, I want to have the Best American series on Kindle or on my iPad!
posted by inturnaround at 10:20 AM on October 5, 2010

dances_with_sneetches, I don't own the book so can't check, but for the articles behind a paywall, they often get posted online elsewhere [illegally or otherwise], often under different titles. You can search for them by doing a Google search of a sentence from inside the article.

For example the Scientific America article "Violent Pride" is behind a pay wall. But searching on a sentence inside the article (the first sentence in the article for example) finds this serendipitous copy (note how "Violent Pride" is not printed anywhere, I guess to keep it hidden from simple searches).
posted by stbalbach at 10:28 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yeah I just checked Charles Bowden "The Sicario" (paywall), did a search on the first sentence in the article, and found this illegal copy of the full article.
posted by stbalbach at 10:31 AM on October 5, 2010

The Great Buffalo Caper is amazing.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:53 AM on October 5, 2010

Actually, this reads like a list of fascinating articles I am going to read later on, thank you.
posted by Ouisch at 10:59 AM on October 5, 2010

I am usually completely uninterested in the details of crimes. But recently, I won a book called The Murder Room in a raffle, and to my surprise, I couldn't put it down. The Etan Patz story reminds me of the book. These long-unsolved cases that can still yield progress to a dogged, smart investigator are fascinating. And, contrary to my previous opinion about crime writing, they are oddly reassuring stories. Yes, chaos, sickness, and violence can break out and wreak destruction, and yet the way reason and compassion can engage a community in striving for a narrative in which all loose ends are accounted for is touchingly human.
posted by Miko at 11:11 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

oops, The Murder Room
posted by Miko at 11:12 AM on October 5, 2010

Thanks for this post, dws.
posted by box at 12:49 PM on October 5, 2010

I really like this anthology. It's really the only one I buy every year...
posted by ph00dz at 12:56 PM on October 5, 2010

Registration-free version of Bringing Down the Dogmen.

Previous mefi discussion of The Boy Who Heard Too Much.
posted by mreleganza at 2:15 PM on October 5, 2010

*makes note to buy Best American Comics 2010*
posted by Sys Rq at 5:19 PM on October 5, 2010

Is this the Kevin Gray piece? Different title, same subject.
posted by posadnitsa at 6:18 PM on October 5, 2010

Thanks for tracking down the ones I wasn't able to find. Perhaps one reason is that they sometimes changed names going from magazine to anthology. (posadnitsa, thanks). I don't know why I ran into registration when others didn't. Maybe being from Puerto Rico.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:04 AM on October 6, 2010