Bøker av Jack Olsen

Oregon State Police arrested John Sosnovske and Laverne Pavlinac for the rape and murder of Taunja Bennett. There was just one problem. They had the wrong people. Keith Hunter Jesperson was a long haul truck driver and the murderer of eight women, including Taunja Bennett. This is his story.

A genuine classic. Not to be missed. By one of the masters of nonfiction. Monte Sole - Mountain of the Sun - had the bad luck to lie on the main route of withdrawal of the retreating German armies in autumn 1944. As the allied advance stormed up Italy to the very shadow of Monte Sole, Axis frustration over their retreat and the harassing Italian partisans reached its peak. With full authorization of Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, and with an infusion of dread SS reinforcements, the Germans determined to neutralize Monte Sole. The result was, in Kesselring's chilling words, "a war operation". Jack Olsen re-creates the unspeakable three-day butchery of innocent Italian civilians that ranked among the blackest atrocities in the history of man's inhumanities to man.Kirkus Reviews: The story of the Italian mountain villagers who lived on Monte Sole trying to survive the war and the horror that overtook them on September 29, 30 and October 1, 1944, when the retreating German army massacred 1800 of the citizens of Monte Sole. Olsen, a writer with a penchant for mountains (The Climb to Hell), tells the story well. The mountain--a 2000-foot peak in central Italy, some fifteen miles south of Bologna--had been a haven for Partisans. For this reason the Germans mistrusted the villagers, but the ugly rastrellamento (purge) occurred more by chance than vengeance: Monte Sole happened to be located on the main route of the retreating army, and the SS deemed it necessary to ""neutralize"" the mountain. In operational terms, this meant mass-murder. The book is based on the accounts of survivors, the few official records, courtroom testimony, and visible scars. It begins with the postman on his rounds, and by this device visits with most of the contadini (tenant farmers) of the region, the priests, the storekeeper, the elders. They are simple people, family-oriented rather than nationalistic, and often likably eccentric. It is their very individuality that makes the ensuing chapters on the mass-murder so effective. Compelling, compassionate--rarely sentimental--a stirring book.The award-winning author of thirty-three books, Jack Olsen's books have been published in fifteen countries and eleven languages. Olsen's journalism earned the National Headliners Award, Chicago Newspaper Guild's Page One Award, commendations from Columbia and Indiana Universities, the Washington State Governor's Award, the Scripps-Howard Award and other honors. He was listed in Who's Who in America since 1968 and in Who's Who in the World since 1987. The Philadelphia Inquirer described him as "an American treasure."Olsen was described as "the dean of true crime authors" by the Washington Post and the New York Daily News and "the master of true crime" by the Detroit Free Press and Newsday. Publishers Weekly called him "the best true crime writer around." His studies of crime are required reading in university criminology courses and have been cited in the New York Times Notable Books of the Year. In a page-one review, the Times described his work as "a genuine contribution to criminology and journalism alike."Olsen is a two-time winner in the Best Fact Crime category of the Mystery Writer's of America, Edgar award.

Updated File: June 2017David loved Cindy and was loved in return. Or so he thought. The troubled young man clung to his new love and dreamed of their future together. So begins the chain of events that was to evolve into a horror of terrifying proportions. Jack Olsen, bestselling author of "Son," now reveals the details of a true-life romance gone hideously awry.After weeks of planning, the young misfits from two fine old Texas families donned grotesque battle gear and crept into the luxurious home where Cindy Ray's parents lay asleep with her two small sons. In the hot muggy room, the "cold kill" was over in seconds.Everyone who knew the unpredictable Cindy suspected that she was involved, but the ghastly crime had been so carefully orchestrated that Houston's top homicide detectives could get nowhere. Cindy wore black and sobbed at the funeral, then began a frenzied attempt to collect her inheritance and as many of her wealthy parents possessions as she could haul away. No one except David West was surprised when she walked out on him.Then the story took another bizarre turn. In a final bid to solve the case, a seductive young private investigator was assigned to cozy up to West. Soon the gullible killer was in love, once again with fateful consequences.Traditionally, true-crime drama illuminates the sinister motivations in the human psyche. Yet Cold Kill reveals something still more frightful -- unspeakable murders are committed, not out of greed, revenge, or blind demented rage, but out of a troubled young man's tragically misconceived code of honor and a desperate need to please and protect the woman of his dreams.Jack Olsen's Cold Kill is a stunning testament to the profoundly discerning eye of a grand master of true crime. To read Cold Kill is not to forgive David West. It is, however, to undergo the uncanny experience of feeling oneself slowly but surely moving into the shoes of a pathological killer.

This is the story of George, an African American who grew up in a Caucasian suburb of Seattle, where his unaffectionate mother and racial isolation led him to develop an effervescent personality in order to get along. He became a small-time burglar and an accomplished liar--a wisecracking "smoothy" who pretended to be an undercover detective. George made lots of friends, especially within a subculture of giggly young white women who partied endlessly in upscale Seattle clubs during 1989-90. And he murdered three of them, bizarrely mutilating and "staging" their bodies. The drinks, dancing, and deejays--the group pad where George lived with an adoring coterie of feckless college kids--Olsen gives us the quirky details that make the murderer's well-hidden rage and misogyny all the more shocking. As the New York Times wrote, "Like fine cinema verité, [Charmer] mesmerizes us with the sense of watching real life, unaugmented, move before our eyes."

And on its surface, the Chappaquiddick Incident (as it has infamously become known) was a simple but tragic traffic accident. However, its political fallout caused it to become the most speculated-upon car accident until Princess Diana's fatal ride, some 28 years later: Was Kennedy drunk? Was he trying to conceal an affair by deliberately killing Kopechne? Why did he wait for so long before reporting the accident? And who else was involved? Olsen tells the tale with as much detail as was made available to him. Though there is apparently only a single living eye-witness to the accident (Kennedy himself, who described having the "sensation of drowning" on live television a week later), Olsen tracks down the incongruous statements made by others who were indirectly involved... and comes to a potential conclusion which would be difficult to refute. There is no legal evidence of this conclusion, of course, but his alternate explanation of events turns much of the circumstantial evidence into a logic-of-sorts