We Keep the Dead Close, by Becky Cooper (Bookshop.org) I complain a lot, A LOT about the spate of true crime books in the last few years where an author with no or minimal connection to a crime they find interesting writes a book about it that's also memoir, and inserts themselves into the story... Continue Reading →
The Man Who’s Forensic Science’s Best Kept Secret
Book review: American Sherlock, by Kate Winkler Dawson (Amazon / Book Depository) Innocent men were being hanged while criminals escaped justice. The complicated crimes of the 1920s demanded a special type of sleuth -- an expert with the instincts of a detective in the field, the analytical skills of a forensic scientist in the lab,... Continue Reading →
The Most Terrifying Serial Killer We Didn’t Know Existed
Book Review: American Predator, by Maureen Callahan (Amazon / Book Depository) In March 2012, Texas Highway Patrol needed a reason to stop a man on their highways. He'd been using the ATM card of missing 18-year-old Samantha Koenig, who'd been abducted at gunpoint from the coffee stand where she worked in Anchorage, Alaska. When he... Continue Reading →
“Mindhunter” John Douglas Breaks Down Behavior and Psychology in Four Profiles
Book review: The Killer Across the Table, by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker (Amazon / Book Depository) This is a book about the way violent predators think - the bedrock of my twenty-five years as an FBI special agent, behavioral profiler, and criminal investigative analyst, as well as the work I have done since my... Continue Reading →
Mark Bowden on Turning Over a Cold Case’s “Last Stone”
Book review: The Last Stone, by Mark Bowden (Amazon / Book Depository) Mark Bowden is a gem in narrative journalism. I've so often been sucked into reading a longread, that kind of lose-track-of-time story, and see it's his after finally checking the byline. He's a wonderfully compelling storyteller and a thorough, detail-oriented journalist. In The... Continue Reading →
An Investigator Spills on America’s Tabloid-Favorite Unsolved Murder
Book review: Foreign Faction, by A. James Kolar (Amazon| Book Depository| Publisher's site to support the author directly) Burke Ramsey recently settled his $750 million defamation lawsuit against CBS and producers of the 2016 docuseries The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey, wherein featured experts and investigators announced their conclusion that he allegedly was his sister's murderer. The series explores and... Continue Reading →
Mystery and Cover-Up: What Happened on an Austrian Ski Slope in 1989?
Book review: Cold a Long Time, by John Leake (Amazon /Book Depository) The anguish caused by a family member’s disappearance is difficult to describe ...The unexplained absence of someone you love produces a void into which all normal life collapses. Though your panic will eventually subside, your all-consuming desire to know what happened will not. The... Continue Reading →
An Unflinching Look at An FBI Career in Crimes Against Kids
In the Name of the Children, by Jeffrey Rinek (Amazon / Book Depository) Jeffrey Rinek, retired FBI agent and owner of a majestic mustache, writes a memoir detailing cases he worked during his career, particularly in the area of child sex crimes and the infamous Yosemite murders, where three tourists (Carole and Juli Sund and Silvina... Continue Reading →
Case Histories of an Unusual Investigative Group
Book review: No Stone Unturned, by Steve Jackson In 1988, several criminalists and other scientists sat down in a Denver-area restaurant and came up with the idea of burying pigs to study changes to environments caused by the graves and their contents. Disturbed by what they'd witnessed of outdated techniques for locating clandestine burial sites and... Continue Reading →
Reasonable Doubt Abounds: Reexamining a Conviction
Book review: Convenient Suspect, by Tammy Mal (Amazon / Book Depository) Rereading the synopsis before starting this book, it dawned on me that I'd heard of the case, although I hadn't initially recognized it when I got the book. And I'd never realized it was as complicated as it is. I saw it covered on... Continue Reading →
The Yogurt Shop Murders and a Look at False Confessions
Book review: Who Killed These Girls?, by Beverly Lowry (Amazon / Book Depository) What do we actually know and how do we know it? Neuroscience teaches us that our brains are never still, even when we're asleep and have plunged into dreams. Neurons still continue to spark and fly, jumping synapses, digging up memories, creating new... Continue Reading →
Victims of South Central
Book review: The Grim Sleeper, by Christine Pelisek I noticed Christine Pelisek while watching episodes of true crime series People Magazine Investigates. Formerly a reporter for LA Weekly, she now covers crime for People magazine (and looks like a non-terrifying version of weird fashion goblin Rachel Zoe, which is why I always notice her on the show.) I remembered this case both from the... Continue Reading →