What's the best phone to do crimes on?

A Search Engine episode for criminals and people who wonder about them

The AN0M phone, photo from Joseph Cox

Happy Summer Friday,

We’ve got a new one for you.

For years, the must-have phone for the discerning drug trafficker or hitman was a brand you may not have heard of: AN0M. Reporter Joseph Cox tells us the story of the AN0M phone, its sudden rise and shocking fall, and the shadowy group behind its invention.

Joseph's new book about AN0M is called Dark Wire, it’s a great read, it reads almost like true crime fiction except: it happened.

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Support the show!

As always, if you’d like to financially support our strange little project the place to do it is searchengine.show. You also get access to bonus episodes, ad-free episodes, and no reruns. Wow. Maybe I’ll sign up?

My travails upon this wretched earth may never cease

I usually try to come up with a good question, related to the episode, to ask people in the comments because I like hearing from people. But uh, I’m struggling a little this week because the topic is not entirely relatable. Or, if it’s relatable to people, maybe not in a way that they’d share in an online forum.

What’s your favorite time you did a contract killing? Good methods for drug smuggling anyone wants to share? Hmm. We will try to solve this before the newsletter ends, but it’s going to come down to the wire.

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A summer book recommendation for you

I guess I could have asked for summer book recommendations, but it would have been pandering. I don’t need them. A mere seventeen years after it was published, I finally read In the Woods, by Tana French. Jeez Louise, was that a page turner. It fully wrecked a Friday for me, because I stayed up too late reading and then couldn’t sleep wondering how the book would end. Bedtimes are something you’re supposed to have learned by now, but, life’s a journey. If you like crime novels with taut story and nice sentences, and you’ve missed out on Tana French… there’s something there for you.

I’m making my way through the French list, as a guide, I’m using this piece Janet Maslin wrote for the Times suggesting where people might jump in.

Okay, fine, actually. If people have summer reading suggestions, I’m not above adding to my book list. I think fiction over non-fiction, this being our last few weeks of beaches.

That’s it for me this week. We’re away until September 6th, but then we’re here most weeks through the end of the year. We’re editing and recording a few now that I’m impatient to get out into the world, which is always a nice feeling.

See you soon,

PJ