Detective Biography

The incredible true story of a group of moms who, united by a search for new purpose, attempt to solve a fifteen-year-old double murder. “A true crime mystery that reads like a novel . . . It can be easy to forget that the underlying case is based on real, not fictional, murder.”—Los...

Women Who Talk to the Dead chronicles the remarkable journey of Detroit Police Detective Shannon Jones and FBI Special Agent Leslie Larsen. Surrounded by skepticism and bureaucratic roadblocks, these women spearhead Operation UNITED—the largest coordinated exhumation of unidentified murder victims in FBI history.

In 2001, thieves parked a box truck in front of an aging tycoon’s factory, cut the phone lines, and used an overhead crane to lift out their prize: a 1938 Talbot-Lago T150-C SS Teardrop coupe—“the most beautiful car in the world” and one of only two in existence—then they disappeared into the night. The tycoon died. The trail went cold. End of story. Until it wasn’t.

Tim Cotton has been a police officer for more than 30 years. The writer in him has always been drawn to the stories of the people he has met along the way. Dealing with the standard issue ne’er-do-wells as a patrol officer, homicide detective, polygraph examiner, and later as the lieutenant in charge of the criminal investigation division certainly provides an interesting backdrop - but more often he writes about the regular folks he encounters, people who need his help, or those who just want to share a joke or even a sad story.

Meg Lowman was always fascinated by the natural world above her head—the colors, the branches, and, most of all, the leaves and mysterious organisms living there. Meg set out to climb up and investigate the rain forest tree canopies—and to be the first scientist to do so. But she encountered challenge after challenge. Male teachers would not let her into their classrooms, the high canopy was difficult to get to, and worst of all, people were logging and clearing the forests. Meg never gave up or gave in.

He was the billionaire financier and close confidant of presidents, prime ministers, movie stars, and British royalty, the mysterious self-made man who rose from blue-collar Brooklyn to the heights of luxury. But while he was flying around the world on his private jet and hosting lavish parties at his private island in the Caribbean, he also was secretly masterminding an international child sex ring-one that may have involved the richest and most influential men in the world.

Nestled in the warm embrace of his immigrant grandmother, Mike Moy was raised hearing bloodcurdling tales of the brutal life she escaped in China. But growing up on the mean streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown, Mike has also faced shocking violence coupled with destructive racism. In a tight-knit community besieged with fear and alienation, teenage Mike takes refuge in one of Chinatown’s notorious gangs, tattooing his membership in Fuk Ching on his body.

From the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police press club: a unique, firsthand, revelatory look at Japanese culture from the underbelly up. At nineteen, Jake Adelstein went to Japan in search of peace and tranquility. What he got was a life...

From 1977 to 1981, Ruth Finley, an ordinary wife and mother from Kansas, was tormented by an elusive maniac known as The Poet. The police, already on edge from BTK’s reign of terror, spent years searching for the stalker. Meanwhile, his cryptic letters in rhymed verse grew more disturbing and violent, spilling into deeds like stabbing and kidnapping.

In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection. At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher.

Beginning in the summer of 1903, an insidious crime wave filled New York City, and then the entire country, with fear. The children of Italian immigrants were kidnapped, and dozens of innocent victims were gunned down. Bombs tore apart tenement buildings. Judges, senators, Rockefellers, and society matrons were threatened with gruesome deaths. The perpetrators seemed both omnipresent and invisible. Their only calling card: the symbol of a black hand.

America’s most trusted and best-known film critic Roger Ebert presents two hundred brilliant essays on some of the best movies ever made in this two-book collection containing THE GREAT MOVIES and THE GREAT MOVIES II. Roger Ebert, the famed film writer and critic, wrote biweekly essays for a...

Mrs. Grace Humiston was an amazing lawyer and a traveling detective during a time when no women were practicing those professions. She focused on solving cases no one else wanted and advocating for innocents. One of her greatest accomplishments was solving the cold case of a missing 18-year-old girl, Ruth Cruger. Her work changed how the country viewed the problem of missing girls, but it came with a price: she learned all too well what happens when one woman upstages the entire NYPD.

From the acclaimed author of Death in the Air ("Not since Devil in the White City has a book told such a harrowing tale"--Douglas Preston) comes the riveting story of the birth of criminal investigation in the twentieth century. Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with...

Charles Leerhsen brings the notorious Butch Cassidy to vivid life in this “lyrical and deeply researched” (Publishers Weekly) biography that goes beyond the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to reveal a more fascinating and complicated man than legend provides. For more than a century...

For 35 years, it has been a riddle which has gripped the world. Part love story, part tragedy, it has all the elements of a Hollywood blockbuster: a beautiful actress, a handsome leading man, a brooding sidekick...and a moment of sickening terror with the most horrific consequences. When Natalie Wood - one-time America’s sweetheart and star of West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause, and Miracle on 34th Street - was found washed up in the cold waters off Catalina Island, California on Thanksgiving weekend 1981, it initially looked like a freak accident.

Murder in the 19th century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides, ballads, opera, and melodrama - even into puppet shows and performing-dog acts. Detective fiction and the new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other - the founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P. D. James and Patricia Cornwell.

"This is a must-read for anyone thinking about moving on from law enforcement to the private sector." -- Sheriff Mike Chapman Sheriff – Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, 2023 “National Sheriff of the Year”, Vice President – Homeland Security Committee Embrace the Journey to Life Beyond the Badge In "Beyond the Thin Blue Line," Colin Whittington, the 2019 Virginia Deputy Sheriff of the Year and CEO of Recruiting Heroes LLC, takes you on a deeply personal journey through the highs and lows of life in law enforcement and the transition to the private sector. Colin shares his ...

A deeply researched account of the life and legacy of the man who defined the profession of private eye. Allan Pinkerton, the world's most famous private detective, has been an enduring source of fascination since the nineteenth century. But the details of his impact, business empire, and private life have been incomplete. Drawing on overlooked primary sources, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones provides an authoritative account of the man and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (PNDA).

They have a vision of a crime being committed, they can see the scene, they can feel the perpetrator, the victim. They know something no one can. They are called clairvoyant, psychic, or medium. Often frowned upon, psychic investigators are called in to help solve a case that has gone cold, and when they do help solve a crime, families can get justice for their loved ones and know what happened. More and more, they become involved in police work to support an investigation or are hired by families of a victim who need answers about what happened.