Popular Crime - James

(Sorry about the lack of a post yesterday, my free time was taken up reading this book.)

Let me start by admitting that I don't pay much attention to crime stories. I've long thought them too salacious and intrusive and basically not worth my time. This book has changed my mind.
Bill James (the author) is best known for bringing a statistical look at baseball and I'm sure I'm not the only reader who picked up this book only because of its author. By his own estimation he has read upwards of a thousand 'true crime' books and this book is something of a way for him to organize his thoughts on the subject. It wanders between crime stories and crime theory in a way that would be annoying with a lesser writer but his conversational style is compelling. I found it hard to put down.
There are several parts to this book. The bulk of it is made of discussions of various famous murders in US history. I learned a ton. In most of these he offers his opinions of innocence and guilt, as well as his opinions of the actions of the police and prosecutors. James has an obvious interest in forensics and criminology that make this fascinating.
He also works to place these crimes in context, especially with the media coverage that accompanied them. This means exploring how various murder mysteries became famous over others and also how different cases changed laws and police technique. This description sounds dry but he always brings the interesting.
Interspersed with these sections are musings about the overall justice system. He talks about what works well and what has failed us. The book has gotten some grief because he blames some of the surge in crime in the 60's and 70's on the Warren courts rulings and attempts to secure the rights of the accused. I won't give blanket agreement to his opinions but he brings up some very good points. Near the end he gives a well thought out idea on prison reform that is probably too radical to be tried but interesting and proof of some long hours of thinking.
This isn't a field that I'm normally interested in and I could hardly put this down for two days.

Amazon link.