The Best American Crime Writing: 2004 Edition: The Year's Best True Crime Reporting

A year’s worth of the most powerful, the most startling, the smartest and most astute…

“Ciudad de la Muerte” by Cecilia Balli, from Texas Monthly
“Code of Dishonor” by Clara Bingham, from Vanity Fair
“Lord of the Drug Ring” by Charles Bowden, from GQ
“The Dark Art of Interrogation” by Mark Bowden, from The Atlantic Monthly
“Possessed” by Luke Dittrich, from Atlanta magazine
“Night of the Bullies” by Robert Draper, from GQ
“Stephanie” by James Ellroy, from GQ
“Who Is the Boy in the Box?” by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, from Philadelphia magazine
“Who Shot Mohammed al-Dura?” by James Fallows, from The Atlantic Monthly
“The Professor and the Porn” by Elisabeth Franck, from New York magazine
“The Old Man and the Gun” by David Grann, from The New Yorker
“CSC: Crime Scene Cleanup” by Pat Jordan, from Playboy
“A Miscarriage of Justice” by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from The Atlantic Monthly
“Watching the Detectives” by Jay Kirk, from Harper’s Magazine
“For the Love of God” by Jon Krakauer, from GQ
“Chief Bratton Takes on LA” by Heather Mac Donald, from City Journal
“Not Guilty by Reason of Afghanistan” by John H. Richardson, from Esquire
“Megan’s Law and Me” by Brendan Riley, from Details
“Unfortunate Con” by Mark Schone, from The Oxford American
“To Kill or Not to Kill” by Scott Turow, from The New Yorker

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 book, Blood Echoes, was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1992, and his 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 Award 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.