This captivating resource covers the bloody history of Mexican drug cartels from their rise in the 1980s to the latest round of brutal violence, which has seen more than 125,000 Mexican citizens killed over the past decade. This comprehensive reference work offers a detailed exploration of the vicious drug organizations that have enveloped Mexico in extreme violence since the 1980s. Organized alphabetically, the book features more than 200 entries on the major individuals and organizations that have dominated Mexico's booming illegal drug trade, as well as the Mexican armed forces and police units that have faced off against them in the escalating War on Drugs. The book opens with illuminating essays that provide context for Mexico's cartels and the long-running War on Drugs and explore the impact of the cartels on the United States. The A-Z entries that follow include such topics as Vincente Fox, "El Chapo" Guzman, the Golden Triangle, Operation Border Star, and the Sinaloa and Zetas cartels. Other entries focus on various anti-drug campaigns, crucial events, and weaponry favored by the cartels. The entries are augmented by an expansive chronology, a colorful glossary, and an extensive bibliography. Offers a reliable resource for students and researchers who want to explore the world of Mexican drug cartels more knowledgeably and in greater depth Provides accurate information on many facets of the drug trade, much of which has been erroneously represented in the popular press and other media outlets Explores in detail the impact of the drug war in both Mexico and the United States Enables readers to pursue connections from one entry to another through numerous cross-references

"A delightful read for anyone tantalized by the prospect of disappearing without a trace." --Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake "Delivers all the lo-fi spy shenanigans and caught-red-handed schadenfreude you're hoping for." --NPR "A lively romp." --The Boston Globe "Grim fun." --The New York Times "Brilliant topic, absorbing book." --The Seattle Times "The most literally escapist summer read you could hope for." --The Paris ReviewIs it still possible to fake your own death in the twenty-first century? With six figures of student loan debt, Elizabeth Greenwood was tempted to find out. So off she sets on a darkly comic foray into the world of death fraud, where for $30,000 a consultant can make you disappear--but your suspicious insurance company might hire a private detective to dig up your coffin...only to find it filled with rocks. Greenwood tracks down a British man who staged a kayaking accident and then returned to live in his own house while all his neighbors thought he was dead. She takes a call from Michael Jackson (no, he's not dead--or so her new acquaintances would have her believe), stalks message boards for people contemplating pseudocide, and gathers intel on black market morgues in the Philippines, where she may or may not obtain some fraudulent goodies of her own. Along the way, she learns that love is a much less common motive than money, and that making your death look like a drowning virtually guarantees that you'll be caught. (Disappearing while hiking, however, is a way great to go.) Playing Dead is a charmingly bizarre investigation in the vein of Jon Ronson and Mary Roach into our all-too-human desire to escape from the lives we lead, and the men and women desperate enough to give up their lives--and their families--to start again.

When Amy Cave was reported missing and later discovered murdered, it was difficult for the police and reporters to keep their emotional distance. The controversial sexuality of the killer and the tragic nature of the story made that impossible. Once the headlines had faded and the legal proceedings were ended, Pat Flagg delved further into the background and the aftermath of the high-profile case. In this book she revisits the investigation, arrest, and trial in fascinating detail.

NOW A MAJOR SKY ATLANTIC SERIES 'Unputdownable . . . fantastic and terrifying.' Nihal Arthanayake, RADIO 5 The astonishing true story of 'one of the most startling police corruption scandals in a generation' (New York Times) Baltimore, 2015. Riots were erupting across the city. Drug and violent crime were surging, with homicides reaching their highest level in over two decades. For years, Sgt Wayne Jenkins and his elite team of plain-clothed officers - the Gun Trace Task Force - had been the city's lauded heroes, working to get drugs and guns off the streets. But all the while they had been stealing drugs and money and gaming the system. Because who would believe the dealers, the smugglers or the people who had simply been going about their daily business over the word of the city's elite task force? 'A work of journalism that not only chronicles the rise and fall of a corrupt police unit, but can stand as the inevitable coda to the half-century of disaster that is the American drug war.' David Simon

Mystery. Manipulation. Murder. Cults are associated with all of these. But what really goes on inside them? More specifically, what goes on inside the minds of cult leaders and the people who join them? Based on the hit podcast Cults, this is essential reading for any true crime fan. Cults prey on the very attributes that make us human: our desire to belong, to find a deeper meaning in life, to live everyday with divine purpose. Their existence creates a sense that any one of us, at any time, could step off the cliff's edge and fall into that daunting abyss of manipulation and unhinged dedication to a misplaced cause. Perhaps it's this mindset that keeps us so utterly obsessed and desperate to learn more, or it's that the stories are so bizarre and unsettling that we are simply in awe of the mechanics that make these infamous groups tick. The premier storytelling podcast studio Parcast has been focusing on unearthing these mechanics--the cult leaders and followers, and the world and culture that gave birth to both. Parcast's work in analyzing dozens of case studies has revealed patterns: distinct ways that cult leaders from different generations resemble one another. What links the ten notorious figures profiled in Cults are as disturbing as they are stunning--from Manson to Applewhite, Koresh to Rael, the stories woven here are both spellbinding and disturbing. Cults is more than just a compilation of grisly biographies, however. In these pages, Parcast's founder Max Cutler and national bestselling author Kevin Conley look closely at the lives of some of the most disreputable cult figures and tell the stories of their rise to power and fall from grace, sanity, and decency. Beyond that, it is a study of humanity, an unflinching look at what happens when the most vulnerable recesses of the mind are manipulated and how the things we hold most sacred can be twisted into the lowest form of malevolence.

Longtime readers have come to understand that Outside's true gift is in chronicling misadventure. The Darkest Places chronicles mysterious disappearances, unsolved murders, and deadly disasters, taking us to far-flung places no sane person would want to go.

In Chicago in mid-twentieth century amid the haze and smoke of urban renewal and the sounds of the wrecking balls and bulldozers, there lived two men, both street-savvy, one Black, one Irish, one young, one old and both leaders of their clans. Each ruled with an iron fist. Each embodied the fighting spirit of the turbulent 1960s. One was David Barksdale, the Black Disciples leader, a Black youth club that would give birth to America's largest street gang; the other was Richard J. Daley, the legendary Mayor of the City of Chicago. He was one of the longest-serving, most prominent mayors in American history and the last of the big-city "bosses." Although the two never met, at least not face-to-face, their fates were linked by a time of change, an era of protest, which was a decisive moment of transformational power that was on the verge of a violent uprising in America's second-largest city. This is a book that is as lively as its subject. A braided narrative of two larger than life people, it has the boldness to combine two oddly related 1960s stories into a single narrative that is both intimate and epic. One captures the unlikely story of a Negro boy whose share-cropping family migrated from rural Mississippi to Chicago, where he started a street gang that became the largest in America. The book's other path follows America's last big city "boss," whose persona is legendary and bigger than life. While historians, political pundits, and those who knew him speak of "Hizzonor" as being a proud, Irish-Catholic who was the long-time godfather of the Chicago Democratic Party and Mayor who saved Chicago from becoming another Detroit or Cleveland, they also acknowledge that he was a fierce segregationist. He had a contentious relationship with civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Richard Daley also played a significant role in the history of the United States Democratic Party. Williams an internationally recognized gang expert and interventionist, eloquently tells the story of these men, their clans, and their on-going struggle for power, status, and legacy. However unheard of and unimaginable, some of the incidents may seem, this is not a work of fiction. Everything written comes from archival documents, official reports, focus groups, in-depth interviews, or first-hand accounts. The action takes place mostly in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood. Still, there are some occasions where the action takes place in Bronzeville, the Woodlawn community, on the West Side of the City and downtown.

He was a pillar of the community, serving on local committees, donating prizes to the rugby club, organising charity collections. His patients thought the world of him: he was attentive, kind, never too busy to chat.
Yet Dr Harold Frederick Shipman was also the most prolific serial killer the world has ever known, with between 200 and 300 victims. Quietly, for many years, the small, bespectacled GP was making unexpected house calls - and walking out leaving a dead body behind.
The murderous career of Dr Shipman only came to an end when police in Hyde, Greater Manchester, were called to investigate a forged will. Overnight, they found themselves embroiled in the biggest murder case in British history.
Prescription for Murder is a compelling account of these monstrous crimes and of the man who committed them. The authors have had unparalleled access to friends, colleagues and patients. Their in-depth and authoritative investigation looks at how he killed, how he was able to get away with it for so long, and - most important of all - why.

Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981.  Was it murder or self-defense?  For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares.  John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction.  Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.

It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproariously funny black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight.  These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience.  Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city has become a modern classic.

An explosive investigation into how the United States of America built one of the largest illicit offshore finance systems in the world. For years, one country has acted as the greatest offshore haven in the world, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in illicit finance tied directly to corrupt regimes, extremist networks, and the worst the world has to offer. But it hasn't been the sand-splattered Caribbean islands, or even traditional financial secrecy havens like Switzerland or Panama that have come to dominate the offshoring world. Instead, the country profiting the most also happens to be the one that still claims to be the moral leader of the free world, and the one that claims to be leading the fight against the crooked and the corrupt: the United States of America. American Kleptocracy examines just how the United States' implosion into a centre of global offshoring took place: how states such as Delaware and Nevada perfected the art of the anonymous shell company; how post-9/11 reformers watched their success usher in a new flood of illicit finance directly into the U.S.; how African despots and post-Soviet oligarchs came to dominate American coastlines, American industries, and entire cities and small towns across the American Midwest; how Nazi-era lobbyists birthed an entire industry of spin-men whitewashing transnational crooks and despots, and how dirty money has now begun infiltrating America's universities, think tanks, and cultural centres; and how those on the frontline are trying to restore America's legacy of anti-corruption leadership and finally end this reign of American kleptocracy. It also looks at how Trump's presidency accelerated all of the trends already on hand and how the Biden administration can, and should, act on this tawdry inheritance.

Sex. Drugs. Danger. Death. FROM THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF BESTSELLERS HOTEL KEROBOKAN AND SNOWING IN BALI This is the adrenaline-pumping story of the world's most audacious drug runners and the police hunt, 'Operation Playboy', to track them down. These drug-running playboys travel the globe: they ski in Europe, surf in Bali, hook up with celebrity models and live in five-star hotels. They are 24/7 party boys with brass balls, steely nerves and reckless ambitions. They pay for their high-risk, hedonistic lifestyle by trafficking cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana on international flights and through the world's biggest airports. But to ride the wave you have to roll the dice. And in this game a bust means prison - or even a firing squad. A Brazilian cop is watching closely, determined to close the net. With a small team, he battles corrupt colleagues and bent judges to learn the secrets of the playboys and bring about their downfall. Celebrated true-crime writer and journalist Kathryn Bonella has travelled the world to collect first-person testimony from an international network of mules and their bosses, as well as from the elite cops who are hot on their trail. The result is a page-turning, white-knuckle thriller - the true story of a manhunt codenamed OPERATION PLAYBOY.

In this brutal, gripping novel, Selva Almada narrates the case of three small-town teenage girls murdered in the 1980's in the interior of Argentina.Three deaths without culprits: 19-year old Andrea Danne, stabbed in her own bed; 15-year old Maria Luisa Quevedo, raped, strangled, and dumped in wasteland; and 20-year old Sarita Mundin, whose disfigured body was found on a river bank. Almada takes these and other tales of abused women to weave together a dry, straightforward portrait of gender violence that surpasses national borders and speaks to readers' consciousness all over the world.Following the success of The Wind That Lays Waste, internationally acclaimed Argentinian author Selva Almada dives into the heart of this problem with a reported novel, comparable to Truman Capote's _In Cold Blood _or John Hersey's Hiroshima, in response to the urgent need for attention to the ongoing catastrophe that is femicide.Not a police chronicle, not a thriller, but a contemporary noir novel that lives in the hearts of these women and the men who have abused them. Almada captures the invisible, and with lyrical brutality, blazes a new trail in journalistic fiction.

The "fascinating" true story behind the HBO Max and Hulu series about Texas housewife Candy Montgomery and the bizarre murder that shocked a community (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore had a lot in common: They sang together in the Methodist church choir, their daughters were best friends, and their husbands had good jobs working for technology companies in the north Dallas suburbs known as Silicon Prairie. But beneath the placid surface of their seemingly perfect lives, both women simmered with unspoken frustrations and unanswered desires. On a hot summer day in 1980, the secret passions and jealousies that linked Candy and Betty exploded into murderous rage. What happened next is usually the stuff of fiction. But the bizarre and terrible act of violence that occurred in Betty's utility room that morning was all too real. Based on exclusive interviews with the Gore and Montgomery families, Edgar Award finalist Evidence of Love is the "superbly written" account of a gruesome tragedy and the trial that made national headlines when the defendant entered the most unexpected of pleas: not guilty by reason of self-defense (Fort Worth Star-Telegram). Adapted into the Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning television movie A Killing in a Small Town-as well as the new limited series Candy on Hulu and Love and Death on HBO Max-this chilling tale of sin and savagery will "fascinate true crime aficionados" (Kirkus Reviews).

The real story of how the federal government finally apprehended and convicted America's most notorious criminal, Al Capone.
Drawing on recently discovered government documents, wiretap transcripts, and Al Capone's handwritten personal letters, "New York Times" bestselling author Jonathan Eig tells the dramatic story of the rise and fall of the nation's most infamous criminal in rich new detail.
From the moment he arrived in Chicago in 1920, Capone found himself in a world with limitless opportunity. Within a few years Capone controlled an illegal bootlegging business with annual revenue rivaling that of some of the nation's largest corporations. Along the way he corrupted the Chicago police force and local courts while becoming one of the world's first international celebrities. Legend credits Eliot Ness and his "Untouchables" with apprehending Capone, but Eig shows that this wasn't so. In "Get Capone, " the man known as "Scarface" emerges as a complex man, doomed as much by his ego as by his vicious criminality. This is the real Al Capone.

The acclaimed author of AMERICAN DIRT reveals the devastating effects of a shocking tragedy in this landmark true crime book: the first ever to look intimately at the experiences of both the victims and their families. A RIP IN HEAVEN is Jeanine Cummins' story of a night in April, 1991, when her two cousins Julie and Robin Kerry, and her brother, Tom, were assaulted on the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River just outside of St. Louis. When, after a harrowing ordeal, Tom managed to escape the attackers and flag down help, he thought the nightmare would soon be over. He couldn't have been more wrong. Tom, his sister Jeanine, and their entire family were just at the beginning of a horrific odyssey through the aftermath of a violent crime, a world of shocking betrayal, endless heartbreak, and utter disillusionment. It was a trial by fire from which no family member would emerge unscathed.

A true-crime, coming-of-age story with a tragic twist: a New York editor's quest to uncover the truth about the brutal murder of her wild and seductive friend in a "riveting...and thoughtful examination of how we grow up and apart" (Cosmopolitan).As girls growing up in rural New Jersey in the late 1980s, Ashley and Carolyn had everything in common: two outsiders who loved spending afternoons exploring the woods. Only when the girls attended different high schools did they begin to grow apart. While Carolyn struggled to fit in, Ashley quickly became a hot girl: popular, extroverted, and sexually precocious. After high school, Carolyn entered college in New York City and Ashley ended up in Los Angeles, where she quit school to work as a stripper and an escort, dating actors and older men, and experimenting with drugs. The last time Ashley visited New York, Carolyn was shocked by how they had grown apart. One year later, Ashley was stabbed to death at age twenty-two in her Hollywood home. "Original and engaging" (Kirkus Reviews), The Hot One is the story of Carolyn's emotional quest to find out what really happened to her oldest friend. It's a journey that takes her through the hills of Hollywood, into courtrooms in Los Angeles, to strip clubs in Las Vegas, and back to her own childhood memories as she tries to unravel why she and Ashley became so different. How did Ashley end up the overtly sexual risk-taker--the hot one--while Carolyn was seen as the smart one, the observer? Carolyn's "memoir will shock and fascinate" (Booklist) readers as she explores the power of female friendships and pays tribute to the ones that stay with you long after they're gone.

For most of human history, sudden and unexpected deaths of a suspicious nature, when they were investigated at all, were examined by lay persons without any formal training. People often got away with murder. That is, until Frances Glessner Lee. Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962), born a socialite to a wealthy and influential Chicago family, was never meant to have a career, let alone one steeped in death and depravity. Yet she became the mother of modern forensics and was instrumental in elevating homicide investigation to a scientific discipline. Frances Glessner Lee learned forensic science under the tutelage of pioneering medical examiner Magrath. A voracious reader too, Lee acquired and read books on criminology and forensic science - eventually establishing the largest library of legal medicine. Lee went on to create The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death - a series of dollhouse-sized crime scene dioramas depicting the facts of actual cases in exquisitely detailed miniature - and perhaps the thing she is most famous for. Celebrated by artists, miniaturists and scientists, they were first used as a teaching tool in homicide seminars at Harvard Medical School in the 1930s, subsequently becoming an integral part of the longest-running and still the highest-regarded training for police detectives of its kind in America. In Unexplained Deaths, Bruce Goldfarb weaves Lee's remarkable story with the advances in forensics made in her lifetime to tell the tale of the birth of modern forensics.

New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice The shocking story of the massacre of a group of Nepalese men working as Defense contractors for the United States Government during the Iraq War, and the widow who dedicated her life to finding justice for her husband and the other victims-a riveting tale of courageous heroes, corporate war profiteers, international business, exploitation, trafficking, and human rights in the age of global capitalism that reveals how modern power truly works. In August of 2004, twelve men left their village in Nepal for jobs at a five-star luxury hotel in Amman, Jordan. They had no idea that they had actually been hired for sub-contract work on an American military base in Iraq. But fate took an even darker turn when the dozen men were kidnapped and murdered by Islamic extremists. Their gruesome deaths were captured in one of the first graphic execution videos disseminated on the web-the largest massacre of contractors during the war. Compounding the tragedy, their deaths received little notice. Why were these men, from a remote country far removed from the war, in Iraq? How had they gotten there? Who were they working for? Consumed by these questions, award-winning investigative journalist Cam Simpson embarked on a journey to find answers, a decade-long odyssey that would uncover a web of evil spanning the globe-and trigger a chain of events involving one brave young widow, three indefatigable human rights lawyers, and a formidable multinational corporation with deep governmental ties. A heart-rending, page-turning narrative that moves from the Himalayas to the Middle East to Houston and culminates in an epic court battle, The Girl from Kathmandu is a story of death and life-of the war in Iraq, the killings of the twelve Nepalese, a journalist determined to uncover the truth, and a trio of human rights lawyers dedicated to finding justice. At its heart is one unforgettable young woman, Kamala Magar, who found the courage to face the influential men who sent her husband to his death-a model of strength hope, bravery, and an unbreakable spirit who reminds us of the power we all have to make a difference.

THE FINAL WORD FROM THE LAST KING OF GANGLAND WITH A FOREWORD BY MARTINA COLE 'We couldn't, we wouldn't, let anyone take a liberty. That was never an option at that time.' Eddie Richardson is the last brand-name gangster. Say the name and the world of violent criminality grabs you by the throat. The Richardson brothers, Eddie and Charlie, and their infamous 'Torture Gang', made money while their rivals Ronnie and Reggie Kray made fatal mischief. They fought each other, but now, in 2018, Eddie Richardson says: 'They tell me blood is thicker than water, but with Charlie it wasn't so. He was evil.' With his brother dead, Eddie Richardson feels free to detail the story of a vicious family feud that provoked extravagant acrimony. No Handcuffs unravels the mysteries of decades of crime and political incident. The story of a turbulent era, it rivals the most imaginative fiction in its portrayal of gangland life with all its chanciness and rawness and careless disregard for any obstacle on the way to its target, the big money. In an inspired collaboration with bestselling author Douglas Thompson, the mature Eddie Richardson is given a voice to reflect on his journey from the scrapyards of South London to the glitz and glamour of the West End nightclubs, to the flesh and tease of Soho, down Downing Street and through the door of Number 10 to the perils of espionage and international intrigue, and his elevation to demigod status in hard-men territory - and finally as a high-security inmate at Her Majesty's pleasure, but with a personal fridge kept well stocked with gourmet food. No Handcuffs resonates today for, if anything, greed and corruption are more perverse, more rampant. As Eddie Richardson points out: 'We wrote the handbook for them.'

He was a serious 'Face' in the London underworld. His jackets were tailored to hold his machete. His drug deals earned him thousands of pounds. Penthouse apartment, luxury cars, designer clothes and women. John Pridmore had everything he wanted. Until one night outside a London club he nearly killed a man.

'Another dark parable of society's vilification of women. Intelligent ... A tantalizing investigation' Kate Colquhoun.

On the night of 3 October 1922, in the quiet suburb of Ilford, Edith Thompson and her husband Percy were walking home after an evening spent at a London theatre, when a man sprang out of the darkness and stabbed Percy to death. The assailant was Frederick Bywaters, a twenty-year-old merchant seaman who had been Edith's lover. When the police learned of his relationship with Edith, she was arrested as his accomplice, despite protesting her innocence. The remarkably intense love letters Edith wrote to Freddy – some of them couched in ambiguous language – were read out at their trial for murder at the Old Bailey. They would seal her fate: Edith and Freddy were hanged for the murder of Percy Thompson in January 1923. Freddy was demonstrably guilty; but was Edith truly so?

In shattering detail and with masterful emotional insight, Laura Thompson charts the course of a liaison with thrice-fatal consequences, and investigates what the trial and execution of Edith Thompson tell us about perceptions of women in early twentieth-century Britain.

Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human.

The book that made Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative.

From Dodge City to Abilene and beyond, Kansas in its early years was one fine place for outlaws, and one of the most violent places in America's history. Consider the exploits of Jesse James-a sociopathic killer or a Robin Hood who redistributed Union wealth? Or those of Big Nose Kate, whose true identity was much nobler than her reputation as Doc Holliday's longtime companion. That's not to mention the dangerous inmate who became the learned Bird Man of Kansas-a renowned canary expert whose life story became a hit film. All this and more is yours for the reading in Outlaw Tales of Kansas, which introduces fifteen of the most dramatic events, and the most daring and despicable desperados, in the history of the Sunflower State.