"Entertaining and authoritative, this alphabetically arranged companion is an indispensable reference guide to crime and mystery writing. Unique in its biographical and critical treatment of major detective writers, it is a comprehensive digest to the gen

Chief Clancy Wiggum might very well be the dimmest and most incompetent civic leader in Springfield, but as long as he has a gun and badge, most citizens exercise their right to remain silent. After many a late-night stakeout and thousands of early morning donuts, this top cop offers up his procedural wisdom on what it takes to wear the shield, how to keep on the right side of the law, and the real cost of quick and speedy justice. On Wiggum's watch you'll check out the seized property auction catalog, learn the secret language of police codes, find out how to avoid a speeding ticket, line up with Springfield's usual suspects, and get the skinny on Springfield's most wanted criminal...El Barto.

Gordon Parks' ethically complex depictions of crime in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, with previously unseen photographs When Life magazine asked Gordon Parks to illustrate a recurring series of articles on crime in the United States in 1957, he had already been a staff photographer for nearly a decade, the first African American to hold this position. Parks embarked on a six-week journey that took him and a reporter to the streets of New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Unlike much of his prior work, the images made were in color. The resulting eight-page photo-essay "The Atmosphere of Crime" was noteworthy not only for its bold aesthetic sophistication, but also for how it challenged stereotypes about criminality then pervasive in the mainstream media. They provided a richly hued, cinematic portrayal of a largely hidden world: that of violence, police work and incarceration, seen with empathy and candor. Parks rejected clichés of delinquency, drug use and corruption, opting for a more nuanced view that reflected the social and economic factors tied to criminal behavior and afforded a rare window into the working lives of those charged with preventing and prosecuting it. Transcending the romanticism of the gangster film, the suspense of the crime caper and the racially biased depictions of criminality then prevalent in American popular culture, Parks coaxed his camera to record reality so vividly and compellingly that it would allow Life's readers to see the complexity of these chronically oversimplified situations. The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957 includes an expansive selection of never-before-published photographs from Parks' original reportage. Gordon Parks was born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912. An itinerant laborer, he worked as a brothel pianist and railcar porter, among other jobs, before buying a camera at a pawnshop, training himself and becoming a photographer. He evolved into a modern-day Renaissance man, finding success as a film director, writer and composer. The first African-American director to helm a major motion picture, he helped launch the blaxploitation genre with his film Shaft (1971). Parks died in 2006.

An annotated list of more than five thousand books, including novels, short story collections, histories of the genre, true crime tales, and Sherlock Holmes studies