New York's criminal history is well documented, but some stories remain neglected. Others are almost entirely forgotten. William Kemmler, the first convict ever to sit in the electric chair, remains a familiar name. So does Chester Gillette, immortalized in Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. The incredible tale of "Iron" Mike Malloy is part of New York legend. Others, no less important, are overlooked. Examples include Martha Place, the first woman in the electric chair; "Paper Box Kid," Oreste Shillitoni, who shot his way out of Sing Sing Prison's notorious Death House; Doctor Robert Buchanan, who made an important contribution to forensic science; Carlyle Harris, a household name in the 1890s who rarely draws attention today; and Eddie Lee Mays, New York's 695th (and last) execution. Crime writer Robert Walsh takes you on a journey through a rogues' gallery of some of New York's most notable crimes and criminals. Alongside them are some forgotten felons, whose stories, though less memorialized, are as fascinating as any.

Andrew Karmen tracks a quarter century of murder in the city Americans have most commonly associated with rampant street crime. Providing both a local and a national context for New York's plunging crime rate, Karmen tests and debunks the many self-serving explanations for the decline. While crediting a more effective police force for its efforts, Karmen also emphasizes the decline of the crack epidemic, skyrocketing incarceration rates, favorable demographic trends, a healthy economy, an influx of hard working and law abiding immigrants, a rise in college enrollment, and an unexpected outbreak of improved behavior by young men growing up in poverty stricken neighborhoods. New York Murder Mystery is the most authoritative study to date of why crime rates rise and fall.

Female criminals are often portrayed as caricatures: Black Widows, Queenpins, Mob Molls, or Femme Fatales. But the real stories are much more fascinating and complex.In Pretty Evil New York author Elizabeth Kerri Mahon takes you on a journey through a rogue’s gallery of some of New York’s most notable female criminals. Drawing on newspaper coverage and other primary sources, this collection of historical true crime stories chronicles eleven women who were media sensations in their day, making headlines across the country decades before radio, television, or social media. Roxalana Druse, the last woman to be hanged in New York; Ruth Snyder, immortalized in James M. Cain’s novella Double Indemnity; serial killer Lizzie Halliday, nicknamed the Worst Woman in the World, who became a Hudson Valley legend; Celia Cooney, the Bobbed Hair Bandit; and Stephanie St. Clair, who rose to the top of the numbers game and then made Harlem cheer when she stood up to mobster Dutch Schultz. Alongside them are some forgotten felons, whose stories, though less well-known, are just as fascinating. Spurred by passion, profit, paranoia, or just plain perverse pleasure, these ladies span one hundred years of murder, mayhem, and madness in the Empire State.

New York City’s own Lizzie Borden, and eleven other true crimes “as ghastly as anything in American Horror Story” (SILive.com). Today, Polly Bodine’s name is lost to history. But on Christmas night of 1843, she was accused of murdering her sister-in-law and infant niece in ways so heinous that the great showman P.T. Barnum, proclaimed her “The Witch of Staten Island.” Even Edgar Allan Poe weighed in on the female fiend, fearing she’d escape justice. He was right. Polly was tried three times, finally acquitted, and disappeared into anonymity—and legend—until her death fifty years later. Her story is just one of a dozen horrific murders unearthed by historian Patricia M. Salmon in this fascinating peek into the gruesome history of the New York borough. Among the other headline-making cases: The Baby Farm Murders, The Jazz Age Kiss Slayer, The Body in the Barrel, and more. These turn-of-the century tabloid tales of serial killers and psychopaths, love gone wrong, cold-blooded revenge, and unsolved mysteries are still the stuff of nightmares.

Bruce Murphy's Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery is a comprehensive guide to the genre of the murder mystery that catalogues thousands of items in a broad range of categories: authors, titles, plots, characters, weapons, methods of killing, movie and theatrical adaptations. What distinguishes this encyclopedia from the others in the field is its critical stance.

A crime that rocked a city. A case that stunned a nation. Based on the United States' first recorded murder trial, Eve Karlin's spellbinding debut novel re-creates early nineteenth-century New York City, where a love affair ends in a brutal murder and a conspiracy involving Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr erupts in shattering violence. It is high time to tell the truth. Time for justice. . . . How she was murdered and why she haunts me. It is not only Elma's story, it's mine. On the bustling docks of the Hudson River, Catherine Ring waits with her husband and children for the ship carrying her cousin, Elma Sands. Their Greenwich Street boardinghouse becomes a haven for Elma, who has at last escaped the stifling confines of her small hometown and the shameful circumstances of her birth. But in the summer of 1799, Manhattan remains a teeming cesspool of stagnant swamps and polluted rivers. The city is desperate for clean water as fires wreak devastation and the death toll from yellow fever surges. Political tensions are rising, too. It's an election year, and Alexander Hamilton is hungry for power. So is his rival, Aaron Burr, who has announced the formation of the Manhattan Water Company. But their private struggle becomes very public when the body of Elma Sands is found at the bottom of a city well built by Burr's company. Resolved to see justice done, Catherine becomes both witness and avenger. She soon finds, however, that the shocking truth behind this trial has nothing to do with guilt or innocence.