BOOK 'EM

As I write this, a strange case is unfolding in Oakland, California, not far from where I live. A little over a week ago, a man reported that while he dashed into and then out of a store on an errand, his 5-year-old foster son who had been waiting beside the family car had simply vanished. The boy, Hasanni Campbell, has cerebral palsy and so could not have successfully run away in that short span. The foster father subsequently failed a lie-detector test. Yesterday, as the boy remained missing, investigators arrived at the foster home bearing a search warrant. According to media reports, they were seeking a "sword-like weapon." As new updates on this story appear every few hours, I get the eerie feeling that we're watching a true-crime book in the making — which reminds me yet again that, unlike detective novels, each of these stories is all too tragically real.

Post-Mortem: Justice at Last for Yvette Budram, by Jon Wells (Wiley, 2009): As an award-winning reporter for Canada's Hamilton Spectator, Montreal-born Wells has traveled the world while covering crime stories; his extended coverage of several high-profile cases has now been transformed into a series of books including this one, about a Guyanese immigrant woman whose nearly fleshless remains were found in a rural ditch as the snow melted one spring. Wells has a knack for character development, providing so much background on all involved parties, from cops to forensic anthropologists to victims to suspects, that readers can't help but feel as if we've worked and played and stargazed with each of these people for years.

After Etan: The Missing Child Case that Held America Captive, by Lisa R. Cohen (Grand Central, 2009): On the morning of May 25, 1979, 6-year-old Etan Patz left his family's Manhattan apartment as usual, heading for the bus stop where he was to catch a bus to school. He never got there. The blond boy's mysterious disappearance sparked a storm of publicity, and in its coverage of his parents and brother in the aftermath this book stunningly captures the awful dilemma faced by victims' families: Grieving in private, they grieve publicly as well — on camera, repeatedly — knowing that this might bring justice to their loved ones. A suspect was arrested and convicted, but Etan was never found. President Ronald Reagan proclaimed May 25, 1983 Missing Children Day.

Mortal Danger and Other True Cases, by Ann Rule (Pocket Books, 2009): One of the things that Rule's fans love best about her no-nonsense and essentially no-frills true-crime coverage is the stalwart sympathy she always shows for victims and their families, vouchsafing not a drop for violent wrongdoers. In this collection, whose five cases include that of a hardworking, happily married young couple slain by an ex-con neighbor, Rule can be trusted as always to put her compassion in the right place.

Foul Deeds & Suspicious Deaths in Glasgow, by Paul Harrison (Wharncliffe, 2009): From George Duffy — a cleaner of "dungsteads," aka effluent tanks, who roasted his wife to death in 1832 — to the never-identified late-1960s serial killer who slew young women who'd been out dancing, this volume about a city whose "drinking culture ... was deemed responsible for the antisocial behavior exhibited by many of the young" succeeds as do nearly all volumes from prolific Yorkshire-based Wharncliffe at telling the history of the British Isles through a true-crime lens. Each chapter, devoted to a specific crime or criminal, recaptures an era with period illustrations, then-current forensic methods, and then-current slang as reflected in quotes from witnesses, suspects, and survivors.

Desire Turned Deadly: The True Story of a Beautiful Girl, Her Teenage Sweetheart, and the Love that Ended in Murder, by Kevin F. McMurray (St. Martin's Press, 2009): "David double-checked the chamber of his Glock 17 and the loaded magazine that slid into the handle. ... Releasing the semiautomatic pistol's action, he pulled up his shirt and stuffed the Glock down the waistband of his pants." This is hardly what we'd expect to read about a seemingly devout teenager, home-schooled by loving parents in a churchgoing community that prided itself on protecting its young people. Yet in this chilling page-turner, we learn how David Ludwig shocked and shamed that community by slaying the parents of his 14-year-old girlfriend when they opposed the match.

Hard Time at Tehachapi: California's First Women's Prison, by Kathleen A. Cairns (University of New Mexico Press, 2009): Correctional facilities for women are standard practice now, but all female felons in the United States were assigned to cellblocks in San Quentin prior to 1933, when the California Institution for Women was established in a windswept mountainous region 130 miles north of Los Angeles. Considered avant-garde in many ways at that time, its administrators strove to rehabilitate rather than merely punish its inmates, who included then-famous figures such as "Blonde Bandit Girl" Burmah White and husband-killers Hellen Wills Love and Nellie Madison. Cairns, who teaches history at a university near the long-gone facility, sympathetically details such projects as Tehachapi's inmate-run farm and World War II mosquito-net manufacturing program.

The Crime Writer's Guide to Police Practice and Procedure, by Michael O'Byrne (Robert Hale, 2009): Authored by a retired officer who began his career in the Royal Hong Kong Police in the 1960s and did a stint at Scotland Yard, this fascinating compact handbook provides easy-to-read explanations of everything from profiling to the use of force to DNA analysis — albeit with a British slant. The abundance of information, along with O'Byrne's inclusion of many real-life anecdotes, make this intriguing reading for any true-crime fan and not just for writers of crime fiction, who are its actual intended audience.

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