Bowden Mark - The Best American Crime Writing 2006

I N THE LATE D ARCY OB RIENS brilliant study of the Hillside Stranglers, Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi revel in the grim fantasy of a girl reared from birth exclusively for their pleasure. They watch and wait until the moment of flowering is reached, then rape and murder her. She is not a human being, but a plant grown for one dark harvest, then cut down.

Nothing in the history of crime writing more deeply illustrated the banal and commonplace source of criminal acts, that they are rooted in simple selfishness.

This years edition of The Best American Crime Writing amply demonstrates the irreducible and uncomplicated truth so powerfully rendered by Darcy OBrien. From the comic to the macabre, bumbling criminals to cunning ones, it is selfishness that rules the day. The continuum runs from narcissism to solipsism, the antisocial to the sociopathic, the Me who must go first to the Me besides whom there is no other.

This is not to say that things never get complicated, for as with Medusas head, odd and coiling things may spring from a single source.

O NE OF THEM IS MONEY. It is Saddam Husseins money that provides the irresistible temptation in Devin Friedmans story of G.I. Joe corruption, while in Skip Hollandsworths tale, it is the mere proximity of banks, along with an unlikely disguise, that beckons Cowboy Bob to her last ride. Howard Blum and John Connollys Hit Men in Blue? suggests how wickedly money can be gained. Paige Williamss How to Lose $100,000,000 demonstrates just how quickly it can be lost. Money is also the issue in Mary Battiatas riveting study of how little of it, when in dispute, can generate a murder.

Sex is predictably the issue at hand in other tales. How much it sometimes costs is the cautionary lesson learned in Mark Jacobsons $2,000-an-Hour Woman. But, again, it is selfishness that provides the dark core of sexual crime. Escaping the consequences of that selfishness is the central focus of Denise Grollmuss Sex Thief, and Robert Nelsons Altar Ego. The failure to escape it forms the narrative thrust of John Heilemanns The Choirboy, a heartrending tale of justice delayedbut not forever.

Escape also provides the thematic center of Richard Rubins Ghosts of Emmett Till, an escape that is offered, in this case, by society itself, time and conscience the only arbiters of how effective it will be. In S.C. Gwynnes Dr. Evil, it is an honored professions ineffective self-regulation that opens the escape hatch to a criminally incompetent doctor, horrendously botched surgery evidently still no reason to snatch the scalpel from his hand. In Chuck Hustmyres Blue on Blue, it is, at least briefly, the blind flash of a badge that provides a hiding place for a murderous cop, while in Deanne Stillmans riveting The Great Mojave Manhunt, it is the desert waste that offers up concealmentnature, as always, indifferent to the kind of man it hides.

A ND, OF COURSE, there are always those who dont escape at all, as Jimmy Breslin illustrates to such comic effect in The End of the Mob.

These then are the stories in this years edition of The Best American Crime Writing , tales by turns harrowing and hilarious, a feast of human malfeasance chosen to satisfy the connoisseurs taste for what Browning called the fine Felicityof wickedness that is the just reward of reading fine true crime.

In terms of the nature and scope of this collection, we defined the subject matter as any factual story involving crime or the threat of a crime written by an American or Canadian that was first published in the calendar year 2005. Although we examined a huge array of publications, inevitably the preeminent ones attracted many of the best pieces. All national and large regional magazines were searched for appropriate material, as well as nearly two hundred so-called little magazines, reviews, and journals.

W E WELCOME SUBMISSIONS by any writer, editor, publisher, agent, or other interested party for The Best American Crime Writing 2007. Please send the publication or a tear sheet with the name of the publication, the date on which the article appeared, and, if possible, the name and contact information for the author or representative. If the first publication was in electronic format, a hard copy must be submitted. Only material with a 2006 publication date is eligible. All submissions must be received no later than December 31, 2006; anything received after that date will not be read. This is neither arrogant nor capricious. The timely nature of the book forces very tight deadlines that cannot be met if we receive material later than that. The sooner we receive articles, the more favorable will be the light in which they are perused.

Please send submissions to Otto Penzler, The Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Regretfully, no submissions can be returned. If you wish verification that material was received, please enclose a self-addressed stamped postcard.

Thank you,
Otto Penzler and
Thomas H. Cook
New York, March 2006

T HE MOST TYPICAL WAY for a crime story to begin is with a date. S.C. Gwynne starts, On June 8, 2003. Paige Williamss begins, On Christmas Day 2002. Sometimes the date comes with an hour and a minute: Saturday, March 4, 1995. 1:55 A.M., opens Chuck Hustmyres.

Precision, because when you are describing someone committing a crime, you want to make sure youve got your facts straight; because most crime stories are based at least in part on trials and police files, and reflect the preoccupation of the criminal justice system with proof: This specific transgression of the law was committed in exactly this way at precisely this time against the herein named victim, and warrants precisely this verdict and punishment; but ultimately because the crime story is about something more than assigning blame and retribution. What fascinates us is the moment when things slippedofftherails. Its the same thing that prompts filmmakers to slow down the camera at the moment of impact, or breakdown. Its the point where there was a tear in the social fabric, a clear crossing of the line that defines ordinary life, decency, civil discourse, honest commerce, or acceptable behavior. When exactlyNow, on the last Monday of November 2004, writes John Heilemanngrounds the transgression in reality, which is itself thrilling, because what scares us about crime is not its strangeness, but its familiarity. The consequences, the things that concern the judges, juries, and police, are about putting things right, restoring the fractured social order or contract, but we know that in a deeper sense things can rarely be put right, and that the real world, as opposed to the imaginary order of laws and contracts, is much much messier and more interesting. So we settle in to read on. Because the story isnt about blame and punishment, its about who, what, when, where, how, and, most importantly, why.

In that greatest of true crime stories, In Cold Blood , enjoying a revival this year, Truman Capote built suspense toward the terrible murder of the Clutter family by walking us through the final day of each doomed family member, interrupting the ambling narrative with the steady drumbeat of their murderers approach. When Perry Smith and Dick Hickock pull into the driveway of the Clutter home in darkness, Capote abruptly skips over the critical hours of the crime to the following morning, when neighbors discover the Clutters bloody remains. He does this to maintain suspensewe all want to know exactly what happened inside that houseand keep us reading but also because he doesnt want to describe the crime until he has laid the groundwork for us to understand why it was committed. In Cold Blood isnt a whodunit, its a why-dunit.

Most crime stories are ultimately about the doer. Donald Kueck, John Shallenberger, Matt Novak, Antoinette Frank and Rogers LaCaze, John Ames, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, Eric Scheffey, Mohammed Bouyeri, Jason Itzler, Peggy Jo Tallasthese are the characters who animate these stories and make us want to keep reading. We are fascinated by the exact details of their crimes, but what we hope those details finally add up to is an understanding of why they did what they did.