Thomas H. Cook – författare

Thieves, liars, killers, and conspirators—it''s a criminal world out there, and someone has got to write about it. An eclectic collection of the year''s best reportage, The Best American Crime Reporting 2007 brings together the murderers and muscle men, the masterminds, and the mysteries and missteps that make for brilliant stories, told by the aces of the true crime genre. This latest addition to the highly acclaimed series features guest editor Linda Fairstein, the bestselling crime novelist and former chief prosecutor of the Manhattan District Attorney''s Office''s pioneering Special Victims'' Unit.

The Best American Crime Reporting 2010 is yet another must read for the true crime aficionado—an eye-opening compendium of the most gripping, suspenseful, and brilliant crime stories of the year by the masters of the genre. Guest editor Stephen J. Dubner (Freakonomics) joins series editors Otto Penzler and Thomas Cook for the latest annual installment in what Entertainment Weekly has praised as the best mix of “the political, the macabre, and the downright brilliant,” and People Magazine calls, “arresting reading.”

He kills according to the will of God. He believes in the mission that God has made manifest to him: to restore the sanctity of the Mormon Church. The means to this purification will be multiple murder.

The streets of Salt Lake City run straight and clean. The Mormons, God''s chosen people on Earth, are upright and moral. Nestled between the Great Salt Lake and the Blue Mountains, the Mormons have built up a City of God, dedicated to God and to the faith that His revealed Word will prevail. But among the citizens of Salt Lake there is one man not content to rest on faith, one man who is moved to act on it. And he acts without qualm or question or mercy.

Against this killer stands Detective Tom Jackson of the Salt Lake police. Jackson, originally a New York City cop, is an outsider in a city of insiders, a man searching for his lost ideals as well as for an insane killer. He must cut through official ineptitude, blindness, and cover-up to get to the shattering truth at the center of the Tabernacle, at the dark heart of the Mormon faith.

Over his acclaimed career, Cook''s novels have haunted, riveted, and spellbound readers across the world, and his short stories are equally acclaimed. They range from the intensely focused world of "Fatherhood," the Herodotus prize–winning title story, to the Edgar-nominated "Rain," a dark, kaleidoscopic tale of Manhattan on a single, rain-swept night. "The Fix," the story of a famous boxing fix that was, well, not a fix at all, was selected for inclusion in Best Mystery Stories of the Year. "What She Offered," the gripping tale of a one-night stand, was included in The Best Noir Stories of the Century.

Like Cook''s novels, the range of this collection is, itself, astonishing. From a backwoods Appalachian shack during the Depression ("Poor People") to a Midwestern college campus in the throes of Sixties revolt ("The Sun-Gazer") to a midtown Manhattan bookstore on Christmas Eve, "The Lessons of the Season," this collection demonstrates precisely that, in the words of Michael Connelly, "no one tells a story better than Thomas H. Cook."

''This is the darkest story that I ever heard and all my life I have laboured not to tell it...''

There is no love like your first love, and Ben Wade''s love for Kelli Troy should have lasted a lifetime. But then her battered body was found on Breakheart Hill.

Three decades later, and the small town of Choctaw, Alabama is still living with the aftermath of that day''s shattering violence. Ben, in particular, has never been able to move on. Because he is the only one who knows exactly what happened that summer long ago.

An Edgar Award-winning novel. As he draws up his will, Attorney Henry Griswald is haunted by a long-buried secret: the truth behind the event the world knew as the Chatham School Affair, a controversial tragedy that destroyed five lives, shattered a quiet community, and forever scarred the young boy. Layer by layer, Cook paints a portrait of a woman, a school, and a town in which passionate violence seems impossible... and inevitable.

Since the murder of his eight-year-old son, George Gates has written local stories for the town paper. A former travel writer, once he specialized in writing about places where people disappeared, sometimes individuals, sometimes whole societies. Since the tragedy, he plays it small and safe. Then he hears about Katherine Carr, a woman who vanished twenty years before. She left nothing behind but a few poems and a bizarre story. It is this story that spurs Gates to inquire into its missing author''s brief life and dire fate, an exploration that leads him to discoveries about life and death, mystery and resolution.

Haunted by his past, Steve Farris can never forget the butchery of his family at the hands of his own father. He was only young when it happened, but he''s always asked himself - Did Dad want to kill me too?He buried such thoughts deep in the recess of his subconscious and tried to build a new life. But when author Rebecca Soltero contacts him, everything changes. She is writing a book about men who murdered their families and lures Steve into talking. His semblance of sanity starts to unravel . . .

Luke Paige, historian and writer, runs into a woman he hoped he would never see again. Lola Faye. When Luke was very young she''d had an affair with his father and it blew his family apart. Now the years have passed and Lola Faye wants to talk. Painfully, Luke and Lola revisit the terrible events that have shaped their lives. The story they reveal is one of the timeless struggle between fathers and sons, of longed-for passion, of hopes and dreams thwarted by fate and circumstance. This is psychological suspense at its best.