The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

February 1, 1999
During the past decade, Carroll & Graf has published more than 40 titles in its Mammoth series, spanning a wide range of subjects, from Arthurian legends, chess, crime and erotica to fairy tales, werewolves and zombies. This crime compendium has been assembled by British broadcast journalist Wilkes, author of three previous true-crime books. He dusts off dossiers of forgotten and familiar cases, those that "have no ending, for they finish curled up in a question-mark." With excerpts from books published over the past 75 years, the anthology displays a diverse lineup of 38 writers and journalists. Wilkes accommodates a wide range of past puzzlements: "They encompass murders by persons or persons unknown, crimes that resulted in no criminal charge, or where (demonstrably) the wrong person was accused or (again, demonstrably) the right person was not." The 16th-century disappearance of Martin Guerre, recently the source of two films and a stage musical, sets the tone with the earliest mystery in the book, which then skips to eight 19th-century cases. The first half of the 20th century provides another 21 cases, but there are only eight from 1952 to 1992. The impressive centerpiece of this collection, notable for both brevity and brilliance, is James Thurber's 1936 revisiting of the "fantastic events and circumstances of the Hall-Mills case," a 1922 New Jersey double murder and trial.