A Cold Case - Softcover

Philip Gourevitch, author of the prize-winning account of the genocide in Rwanda, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families, has used the case to fashion a book which he clearly intends to be more than just another true crime drama. He wants us to read A Cold Case as a meditation on, and analysis of, "the criminal mind". Certainly the book works as a gripping narrative. Gourevitch is an exceptionally talented journalist and A Cold Case, which demands to be read at one sitting, is a brilliant combination of intelligent research and cool, clean prose. Whether the story can carry the extra weight with which he wants to load it, is much less certain.--Nick Rennison

"Gripping, first rate . . . beyond the outright suspense here . . . is a meditation on the very essence of crime." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"This terse, eloquent book reminded me of many of the classic European novels, because the expected end is not the end at all. The mystery, it turns out, is not how these murders occurred or how the killer was caught but, rather, the nature of crime itself." --Scott Turow

"Part study of the criminal mind, part appraisal of the strange mechanics of justice, it is a trenchant, pithy, atmospheric book." --Times Literary Supplement

"The book's province lies somewhere between those of Cain and Camus . . . Matthew Arnold said a novel by Tolstoy is not a work of art but a piece of life . . . An inversion applies here: a piece of life by Philip Gourevitch is a work of art." --Jonathan Kiefer, San Francisco Chronicle

"Gourevitch is one of the finest journalists working today; his portrait of gangland in New York in the 1960s is brilliant." --Sebastian Junger

"Using a snappy, terse prose style that mimics a police procedural . . . A Cold Case is a lively, vastly readable book." --John Freeman, The Denver Post