From outside its main gates, the jail looked like an abandoned car-repair shop. It had razor wire on the perimeter walls but, then again, just about every wall in the city of David, Panama, is topped by rings of razor wire. There was a line of visiting women, a few of them holding parasols. I saw a […]

Ten Books Books That Will Explain Current Strife in the World I write military counter-terrorism thrillers, which, by design, have to parse the world into neat shades of black and white, with perhaps a touch of gray thrown in. My protagonist, Pike Logan, has to have a clear antagonist and must solve the problem all […]

Ten of the Most Notorious Kidnappings FRANK SINATRA JR. This sensational kidnapping had all the hallmarks of a classic noir thriller: the only son of a Hollywood star snatched at gunpoint from a nightclub dressing room. To arrange his son’s quarter-million-dollar ransom, the kidnappers forced Sinatra Sr. to race around Los Angeles calling from pay […]

Ten Ways to Break the Law in 16th Century Spain From the perspective of a twenty-first-century secular democracy that upholds religious pluralism, gender equality, and LBGT rights, sixteenth-century Spain was a harsh and unforgiving place. Though some crimes, such as murder and robbery, were crimes just as they are today, others were specific to a […]

The true story of a spree of bank robberies that shook Sweden is finally told in a new book titled The Father… Q: STEFAN, WHEN DID YOU FIGURE OUT THAT YOUR BROTHERS WERE BANK ROBBERS? A: I was in my early twenties, studying at an art school in Stockholm in 1990. I remember coming to my […]

The paramedic couldn’t remember what had happened. That’s what she said, anyway. I was asking her to describe the position of a handcuffed man she had been called to treat over a year before. I had worked like hell to prepare for this moment. If she gave me one answer, there was a decent chance […]

10 Ways Cops Know You’re Lying In fiction, the murderer is always an evil genius, a professional hit man, or a taunting serial killer.  But in my experience as a police detective, most criminals are hapless goofs whose crimes are wholly unplanned, the result of impulse or passion.  They are caught because they make dumb […]

THE FLIP SIDE OF PROFILING: COERCION & THE CAPTIVE MIND By Carla Norton Years ago, I wrote a true account of an astonishing crime that gave me nightmares: Twenty-year-old Colleen Stan was kidnapped at knifepoint, locked in a coffin-sized box, and held captive for over seven years. She was subjected to unthinkable deprivation and abuse. […]

Having grown up devouring books like Helter Skelter and Hollywood Babylon, I understand the power of a Hollywood crime story: the shocking twists, the legendary players, the insidious role of the entertainment industry and its power to build and shatter dreams. The story in my new book, What Remains of Me, explores all of those […]

Five greatest art thefts As the author of a forthcoming book about a fascinating art theft, I am sometimes asked to name the most impressive or important art heists ever pulled off. These thefts deprived the public of access to masterpieces—not something to celebrate—yet we can deplore the criminal acts while nevertheless admiring their audacity […]

Spooking the Spooks… Bond has Spectre. The NSA has Snowden. The CIA has teen hackers. What else is making everyday spies lose sleep? Here are ten topics the intelligence world is thinking hard about. The “democratization” of spying. Intrusive technology used to eavesdrop, film, and track people and connected objects are for sale everywhere. Anybody […]