Art Crime

Donna Freitas has lived two lives. In one life, she is a well-published author and respected scholar who has traveled around the country speaking about Title IX, consent, religion, and sex on college campuses. In the other, she is a victim, a woman who suffered and suffers still because she was stalked by her graduate professor for more than two years.

From the acclaimed biographer - the fascinating, little-known story of a Victorian-era murder that rocked literary London, leading Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and Queen Victoria herself to wonder: Can a novel kill?

Following his recovery from a personal and professional trauma, DCI Cyril Bennett returns to discover a complex case involving the art world. Soon, he unearths a dark side of the industry where greed and dubious practices thrive and, where there is money to be made, violence and murder abound. Working their way through a maze of galleries, museums and the Internet, can Bennett’s team differentiate between real and fake?

Webster Fillmore Goodhue has found temporary work as one of the mop-up crew for the Los Angeles County crime division. In other words, he cleans up grisly crime scenes for the cops. When the daughter of a recent Malibu suicide victim asks for his help cleaning up after her brother has gotten into a little trouble, every cell in Web's brain is telling him to turn her down. But she's very attractive, and before he knows it, he's well on his way to getting his face kicked in.

Madame Katerina, Detective 'Nine Nails' McGray's most trusted clairvoyant, hosts a séance for three of Edinburgh's wealthiest families.The following morning everyone is found dead, with Madame Katerina being the only survivor. When questioned she alleges a tormented spirit killed the families for revenge. McGray, even though he believes her, must find a rational explanation that holds up in court, else Katerina will be sentenced to death.

When Gauri Lankesh, an outspoken journalist in the South Indian city of Bangalore, was assassinated in September 2017 outside her home, it wasn’t just a loss to her close-knit community of writers and activists—the shock reverberated nationwide, making headlines and sparking mass protests. Why was she targeted, and who was behind it? Following the case to its stunning, unsettling conclusion, Rollo Romig uncovers a world of political extremists, fearless writers, organized crime, and shadowy religious groups.

Throughout John Mortimer's career, he established profound friendships with people accused of various crimes. He also indulged his passion for writing, penning Paradise Postponed and a series of stories about Rumpole, for whom he was often mistaken. With wit, wisdom and tenderness, he has written the story of his life.

When a nameless, struggling actor in 1970s New York gets the call that an enigmatic director wants him for an art film set in the Amazon, he doesn't hesitate: He flies to South America, no questions asked. He quickly realizes he's made a mistake. He's replacing another actor who quit after seeing the script - a script the director now claims doesn't exist. The movie is over budget. The production team seems headed for a breakdown. The air is so wet that the celluloid film disintegrates.

In the 1970s, a mysterious man captivated and terrorized a small Alabama town. He was elegant and handsome, a charismatic pastor and leader in the African American community. But rumors swirled. "Preaching on Sunday," people would say, "killing on Monday." Far away in New York City, one of America’s most beloved writers was about to get caught up in the strange and violent tale of Reverend Willie J. Maxwell. Harper Lee, author of the modern-day classic To Kill a Mockingbird, was searching for her next book when the perfect story came her way.

Glamorous international art-dealer Elizabeth Teerlinc knows a thing or two about fakes. After all, she is one herself. Her real identity, Judith Rashleigh, is buried under a layer of lies. Not to mention the corpses of the men foolish enough to get in her way. But now, caught in the murderous crossfire between a Russian Mafia boss and a corrupt Italian police detective, Judith is forced to create an even more daring work of art - a fake masterpiece she must take to the world-famous auction house where she used to be a lowly assistant and sell for $150 million.

Gary Webb is the former San Jose Mercury News reporter whose 1996 "Dark Alliance" series on the so-called CIA-crack cocaine connection created a firestorm of controversy and led to his resignation from the paper amid escalating attacks on his work by the mainstream media. Author and investigative journalist Nick Schou published numerous articles on the controversy and was the only reporter to significantly advance Webb's stories.

Gary Gilmore, the infamous murderer immortalized by Norman Mailer in The Executioner's Song, campaigned for his own death and was executed by firing squad in 1977. Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother. In Shot in the Heart, he tells the stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family: their mother, a black sheep daughter of unforgiving Mormon farmers; their father, a drunk, thief, and con man. It was a family destroyed by a multigenerational history of child abuse, alcoholism, crime, adultery, and murder.

The Professor and the Madman is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary - and literary history. The making of the OED was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, was stunned to discover that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than 10,000.

In a secret meeting in 1981, a master thief named Louis Royce gave career gangster Ralph Rossetti the tip of a lifetime. As a kid, Royce had visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and made a habit of sneaking in at night to find a good place to sleep. He knew the Museum's security was lax, and he gave this information to a boss of the Boston criminal underworld. It took years before the Museum was hit. But when it finally happened, it quickly became one of the most infamous art heists in history.

LAPD veteran "Hollywood Nate" Weiss could take or leave the opulence, but he wouldn't say no to onscreen fame. He may get his shot when he catches the appreciative eye of B-list director Rudy Ressler, and his troublemaking fiance, Leona Brueger, the older-but-still-foxy widow of a processed-meat tycoon. Nate tries to elude her crafty seductions, but consents to keep an eye on their estate in the Hollywood Hills while they're away.

The extraordinary life and crimes of heiress-turned-revolutionary, who in 1974 became the only woman to pull off a major art heist, The Woman Who Stole Vermeer is Rose Dugdale’s story, from her idyllic upbringing in Devonshire and her presentation to Elizabeth II as a debutante to her university years and her eventual radical lifestyle.

Nick is stalked by a crooked F.B.I. agent, a Russian oligarch, and an old nemesis, who are all convinced that Nick’s father kept the painting hidden for decades after it was stolen in the Gardner Museum heist. Nick is forced to confront his past and the love he left behind while trying to stay one step ahead of his father’s arch-enemy, Bobby “The Rose” De Rosa. But which is more deadly, art or love? The clues Nick finds along the way reveal the one true masterpiece more valuable than any painting; a father’s undying love for his prodigal son.

In Long Island, a farmer found a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discovered a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumbled upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime were turning up all over New York, but the police were baffled: There were no witnesses, no motives, no suspects. The grisly finds that began on the afternoon of June 26, 1897, plunged detectives headlong into the era's most perplexing murder.

It was an explosion that reverberated across the country—and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America. On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air. When at last the wreckage had been sifted and the hospital triage units consulted, twenty-one people were declared dead and dozens more injured. But as it turned out, this was just a prelude to the devastation that was to come.

For the hundreds of thousands of followers of the Bangor, Maine Police Department on social media, the "Got Warrants?" feature brings a regular dose of levity. Pulled straight from daily reports, these short interludes provide a welcome spin on the standard police log. Collected here is a fresh batch of all-true police-related hijinks. Poking fun at human nature and turning ne'er-do-wells into sages of silliness, Got Warrants? reminds us all to step back, take a deep breath, and try not to take things so seriously.