Bad Guys: America's Most Wanted in Their Own Words

BAD GUYS Bad Guys is a chilling look at the world of crime -- from burglar to drug smuggler, from small-time hustler to full-time scam artist -- told in the words of America's most wanted themselves. Young and old, male and female, career criminal and joyrider, bad guys tell their stories in voices that reveal the full range of emotions, from pride and regret to anger and shame, and even humor. (There's an irresistible account of a robbery gone so awry that the stick-up man has to hail a taxi to try to flee the crime scene.)

The criminals Mark Baker has interviewed for this book talk candidly about how they started on a life of crime, what their lives are like day-to-day (they talk, for example, about the mechanics of money laundering, planning a robbery, manufacturing fake drugs, and so forth), and the often brutal rituals of life in prison, where most career criminals eventually find themselves.

Bad Guys is gritty, compelling, and inimitably authentic. These are stories that take us inside a shadowy world that surrounds us, day and night, but which we seldom see until the terrifying moments that we become crime victims ourselves.