The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crime: The Biggest and Best Collection of Unsolved Murder and Mystery Cases - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786716053 ISBN 13: 9780786716050

Publisher: Running Press, 2005

Synopsis

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. Expanded and updated, this new edition of The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crime 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.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

During the past decade, Carroll & Graf has published more than 40 titles in its Mammoth series, spanning a wide range of subjects, from Arthurian legends, chess, crime and erotica to fairy tales, werewolves and zombies. 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 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.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Running Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0786716053
• ISBN 13: 9780786716050
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 512
• Editor: Wilkes Roger