The twentieth century has come to a close without closing the books on some of its darkest crimes, such as the Lord Lucan murder, the disppearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the coma of Sunny von Bulow. Time and again, Kirk Wilson comes closer than any other investigator to exposing the gritty, shocking truth. And in a specially extended edition of this award-winning book, renowned true-crime expert Colin Wilson adds a new introductory chapter with his own slant on how and why these crimes continue to haunt us. “An accomplished amateur sleuth’s handbook ... a solid fix for crime addicts ... thought through with Holmesian passion.”—Kirkus Review
Poetry was my first love, and we are still together. As any poet can tell you, poetry is a fickle lover and a disaster as a breadwinner. Do not trust her when she tells you she will pay the mortgage.
I have been fortunate to make a living writing in other ways, and I have loved them too: journalism, advertising, film, and books.
I'm now working mostly on short fiction. One of my stories has been anthologized in The Wordstock Ten 2011. Another was a finalist for the Machigonne Award and is published in the 2011 edition of The New Guard Literary Review. And of course I'm still dallying with poems.
I once did a stint as a crime reporter, and became infected by the bug for criminal investigation. The bug lay dormant for a good long while. When it bit again I decided to investigate ten famous murders and write a book about them. That book is threatening to become immortal, less through its own virtue than the fact that publishers keep coming up with ways to squeeze another buck from it and send it back to me for updates. It was originally published in the US by Carroll & Graf under the title Unsolved. The subsequent editions have had different titles and subtitles. One of these came from Carroll & Graf, then three more from Robinson in the UK, then another from Magpie Books, also in the UK. The last two editions have a nice preface by Colin Wilson (no relation). If you like a good read about murder, you can pick among these editions at Amazon.
My work in film has been mostly as a writer and director of documentaries, training programs, and commercials. My favorite is a scientific documentary called VPI/BNL 396. It won some accolades as the record of an experiment in high energy physics at Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island.
As far as that fickle lover is concerned, my poems have been widely published--although with broad intervals between their appearances--in literary journals, and in The Early Word, a chapbook from Burning Deck Press.
I live in Austin, Texas with my wife Donna Johnson, author of the memoir Holy Ghost Girl. Many moons ago, in this same town, I edited the literary magazine at The University of Texas.
