Popular crime : reflections on the celebration of violence

 by Bill James. Here's a book that belongs in every true-crime collection. James, best known for The Baseball Abstract (an essential sports reference tool), here tackles a very different subject but one that is clearly of great interest to him: the relationship between crime and popular culture. Beginning with the December 1799 murder of New Yorker Elma Sands and touching on such notable cases and criminals as Lizzie Borden, the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Birdman of Alcatraz, the Boston Strangler, Sam Sheppard, the Menendez brothers, O. J. Simpson, JonBenét Ramsey, the Onion Field, and the Zodiac Killer not to mention dozens of lesser-known cases James explores not just the facts of the crimes but also the way they were investigated and the way the media handled them. It's a very personal book. James isn't shy about telling us what he thinks and offering cogent reasons for his opinions, even when they contradict popular wisdom (Albert DeSalvo wasn't the Boston Strangler; ?Arthur Leigh Allen wasn't Zodiac; Sam Sheppard was responsible for his wife's murder); and he doesn't pull any punches when it comes to his opinions about investigators (a detective's theories about the Ramsey murder are palpably false, and most of them ludicrous) and the media (noting that reporters turned the sociopathic, two-time murderer Robert Stroud into the kindly Birdman of Alcatraz). This is a remarkable book, smart and thought-provoking and as impossible to put down as any gripping work of fiction. For readers of true crime, an absolute, gold-plated must-read. --Booklist (Check Catalog)