Crimes of New York: Stories of Crooks, Killers, and Corruption from the World's Toughest City (Adrenaline Classics) [Paperback]

Clint Willis (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2003 | Series: Adrenaline Classics

New York is not only a world capital of finance, fashion, and media, but also of every imaginable variety of criminal activity from the most brutal to the most creative. From rampaging draft rioters to Prohibition-era beer barons, from brilliant art thieves to Wall Street insiders, from the Boss Tweed to Dapper Don, New York's criminals personify the dark side of the most vibrant and diverse city on earth. Crimes of New York takes us from the tortured, violent life of David Berkowitz, aka Son of Sam, who terrorized the city in the process of killing six young women to the story of the Manhattan yuppie millionaire whose marriage dissolved in drug abuse and ended in murder; from the life of a woman struggling to stay straight in the South Bronx to the violent childhood of teen killer Cape Man Salvatore Agron. Their crimes reflect our common failings—greed, anger, lust for power—intensified by the brutality and sophistication of the unique pressure cooker that is New York.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

True-crime aficionados rejoice! This collection of writings about the denizens of NYC's dark side is brutally good. Here are murderers and thieves and white-collar crooks and vigilantes; here are familiar names like Bernhard Goetz and Boss Tweed; here's an excerpt from Herbert Asbury's Gangs of New York; and here's another from Rogues' Gallery, an 1886 portrait of hundreds of criminals written by Thomas Byrnes, New York City chief of detectives in the late 1800s. Here are essays by Pete Hamill, Calvin Trillin, and Lillian Ross; here, if you can believe your luck, is a Jeeves and Wooster story by P. G. Wodehouse. Willis, who has put together several collections for Adrenaline Books, is an imaginative anthologist, offering readers an enormous bang for their buck. The book is a collage, a collection of word pictures that vividly brings to life New York's criminal past and present. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"The crimes rise off the page in an oily funk . . . Highly literate and by turns convincing, depressing, even humorous." -- Kirkus Reviews, March 15th, 2003

"True-crime aficionados rejoice! A collection of word pictures that vividly brings to life New York's criminal past and present." -- David Pitt, Booklist, April 1, 2003

Product Details

• Paperback: 364 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (March 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560255277
• ISBN-13: 978-1560255277
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,837,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This one just doesn't deliver., March 15, 2003

By 

Andrew Entwistle (Schodack, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crimes of New York: Stories of Crooks, Killers, and Corruption from the World's Toughest City (Adrenaline Classics) (Paperback)

In fact, you might wonder if it's even the book described above by the publisher. 290 pages, not 364, and there's nothing about beer barons, art thieves, or Son of Sam. No yuppie millionaires and no woman from the South Bronx. Much of what's in it could be crime from anywhere, not just New York. Here's an outline of what's there: 14 entries and one of them is fiction (why?). Five of the excerpts are from the late 1800's (including another excerpt from Asbury's Gangs of NY), two are pre-WWII and five are newer (including Bernhard Goetz). The remaining story is simply a detective's catalog of crime from over a hundred years - 87 thumbnails sketches, but these leave you wondering, because here are the crimes of New York: the killing that inspired 'Looking for Mr. Goodbar', the Preppy Murder (Chambers, who was just released), John Lennon and Hinckley. The Brinks robbery. These are the crimes that make New York unique, and in their day they were widely written-up, yet there's only a few lines on each. A book on NY crime without Son of Sam? Instead, the story of Wilby the embezzler, while interesting, could have taken place anywhere, and did, actually - part of the story is in California. The chapter on how sneak thieves worked after the Civil War, again, interesting, but surely they did the same in Cleveland or Chicago - very generic . . . This volume could have been titled simply "Crime", and frankly it was a bit disappointing. A couple of excerpts belonged more aptly in the series volume "Gangs", which was a far better book. Readers of the series will also note that the publisher has stopped using any photographs which used to jazz it up a bit. I own every book of this five-year old series, but if I had to lose one, this would be it.