True crime Books

Book SynopsisSin City, 1970s. Crooked cops take the cream off the top of crime profits. Judges frequent illegal gambling dens. The winners of races are known before the horses have run. Heroin floods the streets, and the fight for the control of the trade sees men being gunned down left and right. This is the world of George Freeman. Often portrayed as a charming celebrity gangster, he was in fact a calculated criminal motivated by greed and a lust for power and influence. One of Sydney's most notorious and unforgiving hard men, Freeman preferred others to do his dirty work. He dominated that city's underworld alongside Lennie McPherson, controlling a vast illegal gambling empire while keeping top cops, judges and politicians in his pocket. Here, at last, we hear the truth about Freeman's links to the Mafia and drug trafficking, his secret addiction and the accusations of murder. In this compelling and unsettling account, award-winning writer Tony Reeves reveals George Freeman without the gloss.

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Book SynopsisFrom searches for serial killers and missing persons to the persecution of migrants and Aboriginal people, David Price takes us back to a time when the line between lawmakers and criminals was lightly drawn. Based on a wide array of contemporaneous accounts of life in the Gascoyne, these sometimes shocking, sometimes disturbing true crime stories depict an era when Australias laws served to maintain order rather than to secure justice. DARK TALES FROM THE LONG RIVER offers a window into an evolving history of Western Australia that is still struggling into the light.

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Book SynopsisThe U.S. justice system became notorious for the brutally long sentences handed out to peaceful marijuana smugglers and dealers in the later decades of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, the general public remains fascinated by the adventurers and entrepreneurs who gambled with their freedom and lives in pursuit of wealth or excitement but never entered the world of violence that is associated with much criminal activity. Probably no group among them are more foolish and attractive than the men who flew oceans and mountains in often unreliable machines.Flying High contributes significantly to the smuggling genre in two respects. First, Billy Dekle wrote his account of just three years in his frenetic and fearless career at the very start of his life sentence. The result is something exquisitely detailed, its adventures recounted as they were lived - from moment to moment. Second, his wife Kay Dekle, who could not hope to be with her husband again, parallels Billy''s account with her own: with few resources she would have to carry the responsibilities of a family life as best she could. A strong woman by nature, bound by loyalty to those she loved.Fear, excitement, love, loyalty, heart-stopping risk, laughter, sex, betrayal, and death. The Dekles paid a steep price for Billy''s choices and this story is the harvest they reaped.

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Book Synopsis Dubbed by The New York Times as one of the "most vexing and unexplained" mysteries in aviation history, the crash of Pan American World Airways Flight 7 in November 1957 resulted in many deaths and remains officially unsolved to this day. But Ken Fortenberry, an award-winning journalist whose father was the copilot and navigator aboard the ill-fated plane, has devoted nearly sixty years of his life to unraveling this cold-case mystery, and has come to a staggering conclusion: that the victims of the crash were deliberately murdered. A remarkably researched book packed with information and emotion, Flight 7 Is Missing: The Search for My Father's Killer is a gripping page-turner that reads like a fast-paced murder mystery. Join Fortenberry on his crusade as he tirelessly tracks down every possible lead and eventually exposes the person he believes responsible for this tragic crime. Capt. John J. Nance, Alaska Airlines (Author and Aviation Analyst, ABC World News): To we professional pilots routinely flying the oceans of planet earth, the possibility that our loved ones back home might someday be told that our flight is missing is beyond a recurring nightmare. Author Ken Fortenberry yanks you into the dark heart of such a nightmare as he chases the missing answers to a major airline disaster across the cold trails of six decades, all to answer the key question which has haunted him since his early years: Who killed his father. This is a must-read!Trade Review"Everyone likes a good mystery, particularly when it involves an actual event. In this case, it's one of the unsolved mysteries of U.S. aviation history. The fact that the author is the son of the co-pilot/navigator on the flight in question obviously makes it something personal. The fact that the aircraft disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on November 8, 1957, only helps to emphasize and enforce the mystery behind it." Thomas McClung, New York Journal of Books"No spoilers here, but Fortenberry makes a convincing case for what or whom he believes caused the crash of Flight 7. It was a mystery that needed solving. A former executive editor of the Hattiesburg American (1993-1995) who now lives in Boone, N.C., Fortenberry knows how to tell a story. I recall reviewing his book "Kill the Messenger" for Gannett News Service in 1989 and being impressed with that tale of bigotry and local corruption in a small South Carolina town. With Flight 7 Is Missing , he not only gives readers another fascinating story but he fulfills a half-century-old promise to the father he lost so long ago." Joe Atkins, Mississippi Free Press"Throughout the book, Fortenberry examines several different theories behind the crash, including everything from mechanical failure to UFO interference and, ultimately, the possibility that the plane was brought down in an act of murder-suicide by a disgruntled Pan Am employee." Mitchell Kukulka, Our Midland

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Book SynopsisWhat''s New in the 3rd EditionSpecial 50th Anniversary Issue The 3rd Edition of DB Cooper and the FBI - A Case Study of America''s Only Unsolved Skyjacking is an updating of events since August 2016 when the FBI officially closed their investigation.When the Bureau threw in the towel, two important dynamics were unleashed: First, the FBI no longer had absolute control over their paperwork and it became available to the public. Second, citizens and private sleuths took over the Cooper case in a robust fashion, unimpeded by any of the bureaucratic turgidity that had stymied the FBI''s 45-year quest. As a result, the veil covering the inner workings of the FBI has been lifted, and the public has engineered many exciting evidentiary breakthroughs. These include discovering springtime diatoms on ransom bills uncovered at Tina Bar in 1980, and identifying rare earth minerals and other exotic metals on the tie DB Cooper left on the plane.In addition, two independent research groups have presented compelling suspects in the case, and have backed their announcements with a media blitz that has included two documentaries, several books, and a lawsuit against the FBI.Further, Cliff Ammerman, the Air Traffic Controller who actually monitored the flight when Cooper jumped, has finally been interviewed, resulting in original and critical perspectives on the flight path and potential landing zones.All of these aspects are discussed in detail in the 3rd Edition, along with many new photographs and maps, new and exclusive interviews with several passengers, and a full chapter on the fingerprints recovered from Cooper''s plane, which is a dimension of the case not discussed substantively in any other book on DB Cooper.

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Book SynopsisA shocking murder at the nexus of Silicon Valley, California surf culture, and the cannabis gold rush exposes the dark side of the legal weed business in this revelatory work of investigative journalism.Santa Cruz is one of the country’s surf meccas and a favored getaway of the Silicon Valley elite. For decades, marijuana has been cultivated, consumed, and trafficked in these mountains, one of the most important regions in the country for the crop. It’s where Ken Kesey threw his wild parties, where back-to-the-land types came to live off the grid, and where Tushar Atre, Silicon Valley founder, was found brutally murdered.Charismatic, ambitious, arrogant, and rich, Atre was the leader among a clutch of tech execs and venture capitalists with a voracious appetite for risk, work, and money, riding waves at dawn and then putting in fourteen-hour days. When he met Rachael Lynch, a maverick cannabis grower and mover of product, he had a vision of how their lives could come together in business and in love. Atre sought to disrupt the newly legal cannabis trade by funding a start-up with black market capital. This illegal pursuit would entangle him with an array of colorful and dangerous characters, many of whom had compelling reason to want him dead.Award-winning journalist Scott Eden’s panoramic investigation exposes the symbiotic relationship between the legal weed world and its shadowy, illegal counterpart. It is a story of love, greed, and betrayal, set in a world where visionaries, hippies, masters of the universe, and stone-cold killers are all stakeholders, eager to exploit the power of the plant. 

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