True Crime: Missouri
The State’s Most Notorious Criminal Cases
Missouri True Crime Is Subject of Reading
By Author Krajicek Feb. 22 in Gulf Shores
GULF SHORES, Ala.--True crime author David J. Krajicek will read from his most recent book in Gulf Shores on Wednesday, Feb. 22.
The book is True Crime: Missouri, The State’s Most Notorious Criminal Cases, published by Stackpole Books. The event will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. in the bar and café at the new Gulf Coast Tennis Center, 18948 Oak Road West (County Road 6), one mile west of U.S. Highway 59.
Krajicek will read an excerpt, sing a song related to that story and sign copies of the book, available for $10. The author lives in upstate New York and has spent winters on the Gulf Coast for many years.
An Amazon regional best-seller since its release last September, True Crime: Missouri looks into 11 infamous crimes and criminals from the state. It also mulls whether there is something unique in the state’s bloodlines that makes Missourians a particularly foul breed. One source suggested that Show Me Staters prefer to handle conflicts themselves. His advice: "You shoot, shovel, and shut up."
Among the crimes featured in the book: a St. Louis barroom murder that has gone down in musical history; the infamous vigilante killing of the town bully of Skidmore; the kidnapping of the son of a Kansas City millionaire by two St. Joseph barflies; the "throw-away" serial killings of young prostitutes by a Kansas City garbage collector, and the forgotten story of "Cockeyed" Cook, a lost soul from Joplin who massacred a family.
"Krajicek is moved by the incongruity of commonplace surroundings and evil deeds,” writes Ken Newton in the St. Joseph (Mo.) News-Press. “Some themes run through the crimes he has studied. Among them is a recurrence of immorality and buffoonery in the same felonious package."
"Krajicek's crime writing has branded him Mr. Murder, so it's apt he looks the heavy with his bearded mug, bouncer glare and imposing size,” writes Leo Adam Biga in the Omaha Reader. “This tabloid poet and rebel hails from a long line of barkeeps and meatpackers...(He is) a standout writer of terse, staccato prose and vivid details."
Krajicek, a native Nebraskan, was a newspaperman in the Midwest before moving to New York, where he became chief crime reporter for the New York Daily News. He spent the 1990s as a journalism professor at Columbia University before returning to writing full time. For the past 13 years, he has written "The Justice Story" column for the Daily News. Published weekly since 1923, it is the longest-running true crime feature in American journalism.
Krajicek's other books include Murder, American Style: 50 Unforgettable True Stories About Love Gone Wrong (2010, News Ink Books), and Scooped (1998, Columbia University Press), an unblinking looking at crime, criminal justice and crime reporting in America. He is also the author of two best-selling Kindle Singles e-books, Gotti and Me: A Crime Reporter’s Close Encounters with the New York Mafia (News Ink Books, 2011), and Death by Rock 'n' Roll, released in July 2011 by Crimescape/RosettaBooks.
He has written for dozens of publications, including the New York Times, the Village Voice and the Guardian, and he appears frequently on television and radio as a crime expert. A lifelong musician, he sings and plays trombone with a New York R&B band, the Blues Maneuver.
Praise for David J. Krajicek’s work:
"Krajicek has captured the very best of the very worst in his vivid depictions of Missouri’s most heinous villains. Thieves, forgers, vigilantes, kidnapers, vengeance seekers and stone-cold killers…they are all there in utterly compelling detail. Expect to stay up nights reading these tales…and occasionally peeking over your shoulder, just in case."--Neal Hirschfeld, author of Dancing With the Devil and Detective
Krajicek’s work in brief: "Lively," says Entertainment Weekly. “Hardboiled lyricism,” says Prof. Lynne D. Schneider, Binghamton University. "Passionate," says Ken Auletta of The New Yorker. "Powerful," says the American Journalism Review.
"Krajicek is the Catskills' own hard-boiled true-crime writer...Sordid tales of bad behavior, villainous deeds and villainous men."-- Julia Reischel, The Watershed Post
“Krajicek has a wicked mind.”—Brian Murphy, Pensacola News-Journal
“Krajicek wrote the book on murder.”—Oneonta (N.Y.) Daily Star
