2010 Edgar Nominees for True Crime

Five books made the cut to become official nominees for the coveted Edgar award.

In the true crime category, they are:

Columbine by Dave Cullen

Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn

The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston's Racial Divide by Dick Lehr

Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo

Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R. A. Scotti

Congratulations to the authors!

Comments

[gmdavis]

Cullen , who first reported on the story for the online magazine Salon, acknowledges in the book's source notes that thoughts he attributes to Klebold and Harris are conjecture gleaned from the record the pair left behind.

Jeff Kass takes a more straightforward approach in "Columbine: A True Crime Story," working backward from the events of the fateful day.
The Denver Post

Mr. Cullen insists that the killers enjoyed "far more friends than the average adolescent," with Harris in particular being a regular Casanova who "on the ultimate high school scorecard . . . outscored much of the football team." The author's footnotes do not reveal how he knows this; when I asked him about it while preparing this review, Mr. Cullen said he did not necessarily mean to imply that Harris was sexually active. But what else would such words mean?

"Eric and Dylan never had any girlfriends," the more sober Mr. Kass writes, and were "probably virgins upon death."
Wall Street Journal

[Dave Cullen]

Thanks very much for the shout-out on my book, Columbine. I was thrilled to get an Edgar nom. Thanks for covering it.

[Dave Cullen]

FYI, GM Davis is a Denver businessman who published the book he's advertising. See p. ix of my book for the Author's Note, which bears little resemble to the characterization above.

My apologies for drawing this to your blog.

[Camille Kimball]

Congratulations, Dave, on the nom! I will never forget the shock the day that happened (the shootings, not your nomination!).

And congratulations to all the nominees! Writing true crime is a very big challenge. There are a lot of people with real feelings involved, some of them even dangerous. Researching/writing one of these books is a rigorous trek, fraught with land mines. I'm delighted to applaud those who made it all the way to the Edgar Committee's summit.

Bravo, bravo, bravo! I'm happy for all five of you!

Camille Kimball
A Sudden Shot: the Phoenix Serial Shooter
Berkley 2009

[Fiz]

Nice to see someone attempting to stab poor Dave in the back! Nice also to see that as usual, Ann Rule has been totally ignored :-(

[coach bags]

i love you posts!