Annal:2001 Edgar Allan Poe Award® for Best Fact Crime

Black Mass: The Irish Mob, The FBI and A Devil's Deal

Dick Lehr, Gerard O'Neill

• 2001 Edgar-Fact Crime winner
• Score: 10.51

Two boys—John Connolly, and James “Whitey” Bulger—grew up together on the streets of South Boston. Decades later, in the late 1970s, they would meet again. By then, Connolly was a major figure in the FBI’s Boston office and Whitey had become godfather of the Irish Mob. What happened between them-a dirty deal to trade secrets and take down Boston’s Italian Mafia in the process—would spiral out of control, leading to murders, and drug dealing, and racketeering indictments. And, ultimately, to Bulger making the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.

Told in compelling narrative style by the Boston Globe reporters who covered the case from the beginning, Black Mass is a riveting epic crime story that is also a book about Boston and Irish America; about the pull of place; and about the ties between that blind.

Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous

Donald W. Foster

• 2001 Edgar-Fact Crime nominee
• Score: 6.51

Don Foster is the world’s first literary detective. Realizing that everyone’s use of language is as distinctive as his or her DNA, Foster developed a revolutionary methodology for identifying the writer behind almost any anonymous document. Now, in this enthralling book, he explains his techniques and invites readers to sit by his side as he searches a mysterious text for the clues that whisper the author’s name.

Foster’s unique skills first came to light when a front-page New York Times article announced his discovery that a previously unattributed poem was written by Shakespeare. A few weeks later, Foster solved the mystery that had obsessed America for months when he identified Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors. Foster also took on a case involving the elusive Thomas Pynchon. And his contributions to the Unabomber and JonBent Ramsey cases have led the FBI and several police forces to hire him to train their organizations.

Introducing a fascinating new field of forensics, Author Unknown will appeal to mystery fans-and to everyone interested in words and the writer’s…

Moonlight: Abraham Lincoln and the Almanac Trial

John Evangelist Walsh

• 2001 Edgar-Fact Crime nominee
• Score: 6.51

On Aug. 29, 1857, in the light of a three-quarter moon, James Metzger was savagely beaten to death by two assailants in a grove not far from his home. James Norris and William Armstrong, were arrested and charged with his murder. Norris was tried and convicted first. As William “Duff” Armstrong waited for his trial, his own father died. James Armstrong’s deathbed wish was that Duff’s mother, Hannah, engage the best lawyer possible to defend Duff. A friend, a young Abraham Lincoln, took the case and began one of the oddest journeys on his trek towards immortality.

Portraits of Guilt: The Woman Who Profiles the Faces of America's Deadliest Criminals

Jeanne Boylan

• 2001 Edgar-Fact Crime nominee
• Score: 6.51

Inside the investigations of the deadly crimes that have shocked our nation—the Polly Klaas kidnapping, Susan Smith’s drownings of her own children, the Oklahoma City bombing—one woman is the investigative world’s secret weapon. You’ve seen her work: it was her composite sketch that revealed the face of the Unabomber, her hand that put a profile on Oklahoma City’s John Doe II, her “dead ringers” that led to resolutions of those and other cases. Now Jeanne Boylan, the gifted forensic artist, whose beauty and compassion make her one of the most fascinating crusaders in the war against crime, tells her own riveting and deeply personal story.

In thousands of national cases, Jeanne Boylan has pieced together portraits of crime suspects from the pained and fragmented descriptions drawn out from crime victims and eyewitnesses; time after time, her uncannily accurate renderings have helped close the most baffling of cases. She has worked with investigators worldwide and the nation’s top FBI task force commanders, but Boylan herself connects with victims and grieving families…

The Seekers: A Bounty Hunter's Story

Joshua Armstrong, Anthony Bruno

• 2001 Edgar-Fact Crime nominee
• Score: 6.51

With an 85 percent capture rate-much higher than any of his fellow bounty hunters, the police, or the US Marshals Service-the Seekers have hunted down fugitives throughout the county, as well as in Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.

After working in Alaska as one of the first Black fisherman to troll the treacherous waters of the Bering Sea, Armstrong took up bounty hunting in the Pacific Northwest. There he realized that there was a need for a different kind of bounty hunter. The Seekers were born-as was a life of deadly adventure.

The Seekers: A Bounty Hunter’s Story re-creates Armstrong’s most daring cases, including the infiltration of a Columbian drug lord’s mansion, the intensive search for a mad bomber, the team effort to find a fugitive in just forty-eight hours, the nearly fatal ambush in the backwoods of South Carolina, the shootout in Philadelphia, and the hunt for Armstrong’s own cousin.

Combining hard-hitting action, gripping storytelling, and an inspiring personal story, The Seekers: A Bounty Hunter’s Story chronicles Joshua Armstrong’s…