The Giant Book of Unsolved Crimes Author:Roger Wilkes This crime compendium has been assembled by British broadcast journalist Wilkes, author of three previous true-crime books. He dusts off dossiers of forgotten and familiar cases, those that "have no ending, for they finish curled up in a question-mark." With excerpts from books published over the past 75 years, the anthology displays a... more » diverse lineup of 38 writers and journalists. Wilkes accommodates a wide range of past puzzlements: "They encompass murders by persons or persons unknown, crimes that resulted in no criminal charge, or where (demonstrably) the wrong person was accused or (again, demonstrably) the right person was not." The 16th-century disappearance of Martin Guerre, recently the source of two films and a stage musical, sets the tone with the earliest mystery in the book, which then skips to eight 19th-century cases. The first half of the 20th century provides another 21 cases, but there are only eight from 1952 to 1992. The impressive centerpiece of this collection, notable for both brevity and brilliance, is James Thurber's 1936 revisiting of the "fantastic events and circumstances of the Hall-Mills case," a 1922 New Jersey double murder and trial.
Book Description
This compelling volume presents thirty-five of the most intriguing crime cases that still defy solution, as reported by leading authors and journalists in the field of crime writing. Includes such recent cases as British backpacker Peter Falconio, lost in the Australian outback, and reporting as diverse as Colin Wilson's look at the Zodiac Killer of California and Russell Miller's examination of the ongoing obsession with LA's Black Dahlia Killer, to Sydney Horley on the woman who was cleared of murdering her husband and went on to become a Broadway star, and Philip Sugden on that most mythic criminal enigma of them all, Jack the Ripper.
Nearly all the cases involve one or more acts of murder, and all are left with a question mark hanging over them?real-life whodunits that offer a continuing challenge to all who find fascination in the criminal mind.« less