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Bill James is a statistical baseball junkie who tossed numbers and charts aside to dive into the most sensational crimes from the 1600s to present day in his book, “Popular Crime.” As his second passion (behind baseball), James is a voracious reader of crime novels (think “The Wrong Man: The Final Verdict on the Dr. Sam Sheppard Murder Case”). This book serves as more an anthology than novel, as James began writing and compiling the stories in the 1980s.

Versatile British film director known for Bullitt, The Deep and Breaking Away

The director Peter Yates, who has died aged 81, helped Steve McQueen achieve iconic status with the cop movie Bullitt (1968), enjoyed a massive box-office success with The Deep (1977) and made one of the most beguiling of all youth movies in Breaking Away (1979). He maintained a steady career throughout five decades, initially in the theatre and then in mainstream cinema, but he suffered the critical neglect so often accorded those who tackle a variety of subjects and genres and become known, somewhat disparagingly, as journeyman directors.

Pauline Kael described him as a competent director "with a good serviceable technique for integrating staged movie action into documentary city locations". David Thomson suggested that, in America, Yates had "done nothing more profound than send hubcaps careering around corners". Bullitt's famous San Francisco car chase (later revived by Ford as part of...