Crime — why does it fascinate us so?
"It is both our greatest possible horror and our greatest possible entertainment. We fear it — it threatens our families, our privacy, our peace — and are pleasured by it: it is the stuff of our bestsellers, our movies, our Saturday night television. Crime thrills.
"This special edition of Granta is devoted exclusively to criminal behaviour, to the excesses of human conduct: a testimony to social deviance.
"If features James Ellroy — the most sophisticated member of a new generation of American crime writers: gifted, startling and very disturbed.
"And the extraordinary stories of two murders — told by the murderers themselves: both born in the same city, in the same year and of the same religion (but such different endings).
"Plus: Allan Gurganus, Peregrine Hodson, Paul Auster, Tibor Fischer, Italo Calvino and introducing a compelling new talent: Tim Willocks.
"The cover photograph depicts the young James Ellroy, aged ten, moments after being informed that his mother has been found strangled by her own stocking."
—© Granta/Penguin Order Granta 46 : Crime (Granta, No 46)