The Best American Crime Writing 2006

Introduction

The most typical way for a crime story to begin is with a date. S. C. Gwynne starts,"On June 8, 2003…" Paige Williams's begins, "On Christmas Day 2002 "Sometimes the date comes with an hour and a minute: "Saturday, March 4, 1995. 1:55 a.m.," opens Chuck Hustmyre's.

Precision, because when you are describing someone committing a crime, you want to make sure you've got your facts straight; because most crime stories are based at least in part on trials and police files, and reflect the preoccupation of the criminal justice system with proof:This specific transgression of the law was committed in exactly this way at precisely this time against the herein named victim, and warrants precisely this verdict and punishment; but ultimately because the crime story is about something more than assigning blame and retribution. What fascinates us is the moment when things slipped…off…the… rails. It's the same thing that prompts filmmakers to slow down the camera at the moment of impact, or breakdown. It's the point where there was a tear in the social fabric, a clear crossing of the line that defines ordinary life, decency, civil discourse, honest commerce, or acceptable behavior.When exactly-"Now, on the last Monday of November 2004," writes John Heilemann-grounds the transgression in reality, which is itself thrilling, because what scares us about crime is not its strangeness, but its familiarity. The consequences, the things that concern the judges, juries, and police, are about putting things right, restoring the fractured social order or contract, but we know that in a deeper sense things can rarely be put right, and that the real world, as opposed to the imaginary order of laws and contracts, is much much messier and more interesting. So we settle in to read on. Because the story isn't about blame and punishment, it's about who, what, when, where, how, and, most importantly, why.

In that greatest of true crime stories, In Cold Blood, enjoying a revival this year, Truman Capote built suspense toward the terrible murder of the Clutter family by walking us through the final day of each doomed family member, interrupting the ambling narrative with the steady drumbeat of their murderers' approach. When Perry Smith and Dick Hickock pull into the driveway of the Clutter home in darkness, Capote abruptly skips over the critical hours of the crime to the following morning, when neighbors discover the Clutters' bloody remains. He does this to maintain suspense-we all want to know exactly what happened inside that house-and keep us reading but also because he doesn't want to describe the crime until he has laid the groundwork for us to understand why it was committed. In Cold Blood isn't a whodunit, it's a why-dunit.

Most crime stories are ultimately about the doer. Donald Kueck, John Shallenberger, Matt Novak, Antoinette Frank and Rogers LaCaze, John Ames, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, Eric Scheffey, Mohammed Bouyeri, Jason Itzler, Peggy Jo Tallas… these are the characters who animate these stories and make us want to keep reading. We are fascinated by the exact details of their crimes, but what we hope those details finally add up to is an understanding of why they did what they did.

In that sense, the crime story has long been at odds with the tendency to explain all criminal and antisocial behavior as mental illness. How boring would the world be if evil were just a malfunction? If all we needed to live law-abiding, respectable lives was a level head? For all but a few genuinely afflicted souls, crime is a deliberate choice. Crime writers have always known that their best subjects were completely sane. Their stories show how and why perfectly sane people do supposedly insane things.

There is a bit of larceny and murder in all of our souls, although most of us choose to restrain it, out of virtue but also out of timidity. I once wrote a story about a criminal who believed he was, in fact, the most honest man in the world. He admitted that he enthusiastically cheated on his wife and took breathtakingly ambitious leaps into illegality, not because he was mentally ill or evil, but because he recognized the truth about all men. "All men cheat on their wives when they can get away with it"-he told me-"and they all break the law when it's to their benefit." He believed he was more honest than other men because he admitted these things about himself, and embraced them. The fact that he was telling me these things from a federal prison cell was just conclusive proof of the hypocrisy of man.

So maybe that's the heart of it. Maybe the criminal chooses his or her path because it is, for them, the truest one, or the more courageous one. Trapped in an unhappy relationship, why not kill our spouse? Can't make ends meet and need a little excitement in your life? Why not cross-dress and knock off a few banks? Crave sex with small boys? Why not manage a boys' choir or an orphanage?

The precision in these stories fixes crime to real people, real places, real dates and times, and in doing so shows how frightfully ordinary it is. The perpetrators are not mentally ill, they are greedy, covetous, selfish, and amoral. Thankfully, few of us make these choices, but crime stories remind us that we are, nevertheless, constantly faced with them. Virtue and lawfulness are choices we make every day-when we are lucky, in the absence of severe temptation. These stories coldly examine the alternatives, and by illustrating the painful and usually self-destructive consequences, comfort us on our way.

– Mark Bowden