This was excerpted from Ron Franscell’s DELIVERED FROM EVIL, a book that explores the lives of 10 ordinary people who survived mass killers. One of those monsters was a racist […]
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Ready or not, a new year is about to begin, even though it doesn’t seem like that long ago when the “old” year started. An amateur philosopher friend of mine has […]
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I originally wrote this essay as a newspaper column in 1995. It appears here today with a few minor but festive updates because, well, Scrooge is timeless. No businessman in […]
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My son Matt visited over Thanksgiving. He helped me with some little household repairs and improvements that were beyond my skills and reach, then helped us put up our Christmas […]
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“Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” —SATCHEL PAIGE I lived a hundred lives last year. The curious wanderer, the angry plumber, the heartbroken son who refused to […]
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Sixty years ago today, JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was gunned down by Jack Ruby in Dallas. Here’s an excerpt from my Edgar-nominated true crime MORGUE: A LIFE IN DEATH, which […]
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This essay was originally written just two days after the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre in 2012. Last night’s tragic shooting in Lewiston, Maine, makes me want to re-run it, as […]
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The end of the year always inspires me to put things in order. Last night, I was rearranging the scattered piles of books and papers in my office when I […]
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The song says it’s the most wonderful time of the year—but it has historically been a lot less wonderful for some. Crime doesn’t take a holiday. In fact, evil celebrates […]
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A few years ago, I was contacted by the friend of a friend of a friend. He had a strange request: Could you help this French guy find the descendants […]
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One of the world’s most celebrated forensic psychologists called this morning, just to chat. It was a casual conversation. Richard and I talked about the weather, his latest case, Scotch […]
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Essayist Robert Fulghum once surmised that everything he ever needed to know he learned in kindergarten, but I was a slow learner. Maybe Little League was just the beginning of […]
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Because you’re here right now, it’s safe to assume you’re fairly conversant in matters of mass- and serial-killing. You know your Mansons from your Bundys, right? Well, it’s Monday and […]
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The darker side of a city built on dreams and illusions is sometimes obscured, sometimes elevated to mythic proportions. In a place where the words Manson, Night Stalker, and Black […]
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Summer is over and you know what that means, right? No, not the start of school! It’s time for helicopter parents to lift off. Thanks to technology, these moms and […]
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I’ve been astonished at the number of people who have expressed some trepidation about communicating with an author out of fear they’ll misuse a word (or never send fan letters […]
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For many years, acquisition editors in New York have justified their rejections of true-crime manuscripts by saying, “Sorry, but true crime is on life support”—mostly as a way of letting […]
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It’s one of the most common questions I get from a roomful of readers: Who’s your favorite author? Fact is, I don’t have just one. And they’re all over the […]
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Our most profound ideas are often very simple. This one was delivered unto me by a humble, small-town Texas bookseller and scribbler as we sat among his stacks and stacks […]
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For writers who grew up in the West the landscape is unconsciously woven into our storytelling. It’s natural because that’s what we know. And it’s the thing that makes our […]
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Maybe you’d like to take a casserole over to the new neighbors in the murder house? Maybe that kid in the serial killer’s old home could mow the grass this […]
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