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 […]
Category Archives: True Crime
THE FIVE GREATEST ART THEFTS
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 […]
Top Ten Things Today’s Spies Worry About
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 […]
The Ten Biggest Mob Trials of All Time
Mobsters and mouthpieces, snitches and stool pigeons…history is a graveyard of colorful and controversial gangland prosecutions, and these are my candidates for the all-time Top Ten: 10. Waxey Gordon (1933). After a painstaking investigation that included over 200,000 deposit slips, 100,000 telephone records, and a thousand witness interviews, New York’s “boy prosecutor,” Thomas E. Dewey, […]
Fighting Boredom as a cop?
Back when I was a beat cop working 999 Response (911 calls) in Liverpool, England, I had a partner named Jimmy. Jimmy was one of those old school cops who had joined the job as a cadet aged 16, and was coming up to having over thirty years in the uniform. We hit it off […]
Top Ten Mysterious Disappearances by Dr Gillian O’Brien
Top Ten Mysterious Disappearances Dr Patrick Henry Cronin I have to start with this one, for it was an account of Cronin’s disappearance that led me to investigate the story behind his kidnap and murder in Chicago in 1889, which has recently been published as Blood Runs Green: The Murder that Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago. […]
Bow Street: Birthplace of the London Metropolitan Police Force
Bow Street: Birthplace of the London Metropolitan Police Force by Daniel L. Friedman, M.D. and Eugene B. Friedman, M.D. Central London’s Bow Street was the birthplace of what was to evolve into the Metropolitan Police Force. Its Magistrates’ Court was a glowing departure from the apathy and corruption so prevalent and dominant in the latter […]
The Real Sherlock Holmes
The Real Sherlock Holmes On a cold winter’s evening in December 1886, Arthur Foster left the Queen’s Theatre, Manchester, England, with a pocket full of gold and a bejeweled lady on his arm. Stepping carefully through the throngs of hawkers and street sellers, the striking couple hailed a hansom cab. As they settled inside the […]
Poe’s Inspiration for Marie Roget
Poe’s Inspiration for Marie Roget Seldom does one hear or read of an 18th-century murder mystery. No, it’s clear that that the private commission of and public fascination with homicide flourished in the 19th century— the homicides increasing, the journalistic and fictional fascination growing as the United States and Europe became more and more urbanized. […]
Jack the Ripper: The Plot Thickens
Jack the Ripper: The Plot Thickens The city of London in Great Britain would never be the same after the late summer and early autumn of 1888. That was the time when the infamous “Jack the Ripper” killer exploded onto the scene with a series of brutal murders. This malevolent individual left a bloody trail […]
Criminals Who Go Dormant…for a While
Criminals Who Go Dormant Serial criminals. They capture our imagination—in novels and real life—because they’re sort of like the bogeyman. It’s bad enough that someone in your life could hurt you (most violent crime is perpetrated by someone the victim knows), but to be targeted from a distance by someone you don’t even know is […]
The Hidden History of Grand Central Station
The Hidden History of Grand Central Station Like many people who read crime fiction, I enjoy “smart” thrillers—not just car chases and shootouts—books from which I’ve come away with a good measure of suspense and entertainment, but also enriched by something I’ve learned in the hours spent inside the story. In each of […]
