The Best American Crime Reporting 2008

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CRIME IS BY TURNS COMIC AND TRAGIC. This year’s Best American Crime Reporting reflects these critical extremes, along with much that lies in between.

On the side of comedy there is “I’m with the Steelers,” Justin Heckert’s hilarious account of an improbable impostor. What man might imagine that he could convince a woman that he was a well-known and often-photographed player for the Pittsburgh Steelers, do this in, of all places, Pittsburgh-a football town if there ever was one-and pull it off not once but repeatedly?

But if evidence-even photographic evidence-is a weak weapon against wishful thinking, so too is critical thinking when confronted with the awesome power of reputation. Malcolm Gladwell’s “Dangerous Minds” takes one of modern law enforcement’s sacred cows, the criminal profile, and argues-with real rather than fanciful evidence-that it is little more than a sideshow hustle.

Calvin Trillin’s “The House Across the Way” is the tale of an island upon which good fences would indeed make good neighbors…if they had any.

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