This is the seventh installment of the 2009 Edgar Award Nominations, brought to you by the RATS of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library.
According to the Mystery Writers of American Mission Statement: “Mystery Writers of America is the premier organization for mystery writers, professionals allied to the crime writing field, aspiring crime writers, and those who are devoted to the genre. MWA is dedicated to promoting higher regard for crime writing and recognition and respect for those who write within the genre.”
Best Fact Crime
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ColumbineAuthor: Cullen, Dave |
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Nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime On April 20, 1999, two boys left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. Their goal was simple: to blow up their school, Oklahoma City-style, and to leave “a lasting impression on the world.” Their bombs failed, but the ensuing shooting defined a new era of school violence, irrevocable branding every subsequent shooting “another columbine.” When we think of Columbine, we think of the Trench Coat Mafia; we think of Cassie Bernall, the girl we thought professed her faith before she was shot; and we think of the boy pulling himself out of a school window, the whole world was watching him. Now, in a riveting piece of journalism nearly ten years in the making, comes the story none of us knew. In this revelatory book, Dave Cullen has delivered a profile of teenage killers that goes to the heart of psychopathology. He lays bare the callous brutality of mastermind Eric Harris and the quavering, suicidal Dylan Klebold, who went to the prom three days earlier and obsessed about love in his journal. The result is an astonishing account of two good students with lots of friends, who were secretly stockpiling a basement cache of weapons, recording their raging hatred, and manipulating every adult who got in their way. They left signs everywhere, described by Cullen with a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of police files, FBI psychologists, and the boys’ tapes and diaries, he gives the first complete account of the Columbine tragedy. |
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Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and ClydeAuthor: Guinn, Jeff |
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Nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Bestselling author Jeff Guinn combines exhaustive research with surprising, newly discovered material to tell the real tale of two kids from a filthy Dallas slum who fell in love and then willingly traded their lives for a brief interlude of excitement and, more important, fame. Go Down Together has it all — true romance, rebellion against authority, bullets flying, cars crashing, and, in the end, a dramatic death at the hands of a celebrity lawman. This is the real story of Bonnie and Clyde and their troubled times, delivered with cinematic sweep by a masterful storyteller. |
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The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston’s Racial DivideAuthor: Lehr, Dick |
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Nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime A riveting, true-life account of violence, racial injustice, and betrayal within the ranks of the Boston Police Department. The Boston police officers who brutally beat Michael Cox at a deserted fence one icy night in 1995 knew right away that they had made a terrible mistake. The badge and handgun under Cox’s bloodied parka proved it: He was not a black gang member but a plainclothes officer who had been chasing the same murder suspect they were. While Cox was being beaten, Officer Kenny Conley chased down and captured the suspect. Afterward, as Cox waited for an apology from his department, federal prosecutors accused Conley of lying when he denied witnessing Cox’s beating. Both Cox and Conley grew up in Boston and had dedicated their lives to serving the Boston Police Department, but when they needed its support, they were abandoned. A remarkable work of investigative journalism, The Fence details the shocking story of the attack, the attempted cover-up by police officers beholden to a “blue wall of silence,” and the bitter repercussions on the lives of those involved. It follows Cox’s 1998 federal civil rights trial against the Boston Police Department and features a diverse cast of characters, including the victims, their families, the officers accused in the beating, city officials, and the actual murder suspect — all set against the rich backdrop of Boston. Like J. Anthony Lukas’s 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning classic Common Ground, The Fence examines Boston’s race relations and the unwritten police code of covering up through the intimate lens of those who experienced the crime directly. By coming to know the officers and criminals brought together that night at the fence — and the families whose lives were changed forever as a result — we sense how deeply the strains of prejudice run in this city still haunted by tribalism and racial tension. |
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Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern ArtAuthor: Salisbury, Laney and Aly Sujo |
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Nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime The true story of one of the twentieth century’s most audacious art frauds. Filled with extraordinary characters and told at breakneck speed, Provenance reads like a well-plotted thriller. But this is most certainly not fiction. It is the astonishing narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate cons in the history of art forgery. Stretching from London to Paris to New York, investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo recount the tale of infamous con man and unforgettable villain John Drewe and his accomplice, the affable artist John Myatt. Together they exploited the archives of British art institutions to irrevocably legitimize the hundreds of pieces they forged, many of which are still considered genuine and hang in prominent museums and private collections today. |
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Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona LisaAuthor: Scotti, R. A. |
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Nominated for the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime On August 21, 1911, the unfathomable happened — Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa vanished from the Louvre. More than twenty-four hours passed before museum officials realized she was gone. The prime suspects were as shocking as the crime: Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, young provocateurs of a new art. As French detectives using the latest methods of criminology, including fingerprinting, tried to trace the thieves, a burgeoning international media hyped news of the heist. No story captured the imagination of the world quite like this one. Thousands flocked to the Louvre to see the empty space where the painting had hung. They mourned as if Mona Lisa were a lost loved one, left flowers and notes, and set new attendance records. For more than two years, Mona Lisa’s absence haunted the art world, provoking the question: Was she lost forever? A century later, questions still linger. Part love story, part mystery, Vanished Smile reopens the case . . . |
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The 2010 Edgar Award Nominations Series:
Part 1 — Best Novel
Part 2 — Best First Novel By An American Author
Part 3 — Best Short Story
Part 4 — Best Paperback Original
Part 5 — Best Best Critical/Biographical
Part 6 — Best Juvenile
Part 7 — Best Fact Crime
Part 8 — Best Young Adult
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Thanks for the shout-out on my book, Columbine.
An expanded paperback edition is just out this week. I spent a lot of time on the new material, so I hope it’s OK to mention what we added:
— A 12-page afterword: “Forgiveness.” It includes startling new revelations on the killers’ parents. The purpose, though, was to look at three victims in very different places 11 years later, and how forgiving played a pivotal role in their grief. I discovered the secret meetings with the killers’ parents in the process.
— Actual journal pages from Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold.
— Book Club Discussion Questions (also available at Oprah.com).
— Diagram of Columbine High School and environs.
— A large-print edition is also now available.
Thanks again.
Cullen , who first reported on the story for the online magazine Salon, acknowledges in the book’s source notes that thoughts he attributes to Klebold and Harris are conjecture gleaned from the record the pair left behind.
Jeff Kass takes a more straightforward approach in “Columbine: A True Crime Story,” working backward from the events of the fateful day.
The Denver Post
Mr. Cullen insists that the killers enjoyed “far more friends than the average adolescent,” with Harris in particular being a regular Casanova who “on the ultimate high school scorecard . . . outscored much of the football team.” The author’s footnotes do not reveal how he knows this; when I asked him about it while preparing this review, Mr. Cullen said he did not necessarily mean to imply that Harris was sexually active. But what else would such words mean?
“Eric and Dylan never had any girlfriends,” the more sober Mr. Kass writes, and were “probably virgins upon death.”
Wall Street Journal
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