The Best American Crime Writing: 2002 Edition: The Year's Best True Crime Reporting

A riveting new anthology series–a year’s worth of the most powerful, the most startling, the most astute and smartest, in short, the best crime journalism.

Included in this first volume are Mark Singer’s “The Chicken Warriors” from The New Yorker: an up-close look at the tawdry, wildly popular, illegal world of cock-fighting; E. Jean Carrol’s “The Cheerleaders” from Spin: the story of how an idyllic town–the model for Bedford Falls in It’s a Wonderful Life–was ravaged by murders, rapes, and suicides; and David McClintick’s “Fatal Bondage” from Vanity Fair: the tale of a grifter with an attraction to sado-masochistic sex and serial killing. Intriguing, entertaining, compelling reading, The Best American Crime Writing is sure to become 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 bok, Blood Echoes, was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1992, and his short story "Fatherhood" won the Herodotus Prize in 1998 and 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 Awad 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.

Nicholas Pileggi was born and raised in New York. He was a reporter for the New York City Desk of the Associated Press for seventeen years before moving to New York magazine. He is the author of Blye, Private Eye; Wiseguy; and Casino. Wiseguy (aka Goodfellas) and Casino were both turned into films which Pileggi cowrote with director Martin Scorsese. Pileggi lives in New York City.