If You Like CSI...You Might Like These Books
about Crime, Criminals, and Police Work
Reviews by Ms. Belben
Updated January 2007

Baden, Michael C.  Dead Reckoning:  The New Science of Catching Killers.

If you are interested in true crime stories and police work, you’ll be fascinated by the stories and information in Dead Reckoning:  The New Science of Catching Killers.

Michael Baden, M.D., is a highly regarded forensic pathologist and the host of the TV program Autopsy, and he shares his expertise about performing autopsies and determining facts about the cause of death in this book. As an expert in the field of forensic pathology, he has made a life’s work of examining the bodies of people who have died under mysterious or violent circumstances, and presenting his findings in court to help bring killers to justice.

In this book, he describes many of the intriguing cases he has worked in his career, including the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, and offers behind-the-scenes information about how those cases were handled; in the Simpson case, for example, he analyzes and critiques the work of the L.A. police officers who responded to the crime, and finds that they made many mistakes at the scene and in the handling of the bodies that could have been avoided—and might have resulted in a conviction had they been handled differently.

Baden is also familiar with other professionals in criminology and forensics, and he offers a reat deal of information about their work. Especially interesting is his chapter about Dr. Henry C. Lee, who may be the most knowledgeable and respected criminologist in the world.  Baden also describes the work of blood spatter expert, Herb MacDonnell, who runs the nation’s only “blood school” for law enforcement officials studying the patterns and behavior of blood under various conditions.  He also documents the strange work of Dr. Neal Haskell, who is an expert in the behavior of bugs and the way they act on dead and decomposing bodies; Haskell, too operates a school to teach others about how to determine cause and time of death using bug evidence. Anyone who would like to know more about how crimes are solved—especially murders—will find Dr. Baden’s book gripping and informative.

Bass, William.  Death’s Acre:  Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab The Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales. © 2004.
Dr. William Bass is the founder of the now-infamous “body farm,” a one-acre plot of land that comprises the University of Tennessee’s Anthropological Research Facility. The facility is the only one of its type in the world. Here, human cadavers are studied in various stages of natural (and sometimes unnatural) decomposition.

Students at the facility subject cadavers to various conditions—they submerge them, bury them in different types of soil at different depths, encase them in concrete, and perform other experiments in order to learn more about decomposition and train forensic investigators to solve homicides and other mysterious deaths.

Dr. Bass describes how and why the body farm was established by giving an account of his own training as an anthropologist and recounting the circumstances that led to the need for more research on time and cause of death.  Bass uses numerous fascinating stories about real crimes and mysterious deaths to illustrate how research from the body farm is used to identify homicide victims and their murderers.  Much of the recent research at the body farm has taught investigators how insect activity in corpses (i.e. the laying of eggs by flies and the develop of maggots) can be essential in establishing when a person died, and therefore, help pinpoint potential suspects.  In addition, new research explores how fluid leaking from bodies and contaminating the soil can also be used to establish accurate time of death, as well. 

In many cases, researchers find evidence that is not visible to the naked eye—bullets in the bodies of people thought to have died in fires, or dental evidence, such as fillings or decay, which reveals the identity of a victim.  In one case, a badly burned body was examined and revealed that the man thought to be dead was actually alive—he had placed another body in his own car, torched it, and then claimed an insurance policy he’d placed on himself.  In another, finding a tiny bone from a woman’s throat was enough to establish that she’d been strangled.

By putting the body farm’s research in an anecdotal context, Bass creates suspenseful, highly readable accounts of how science solves crimes.  True crime fans—anyone who enjoys a tense murder mystery—will appreciate Bass’s blend of layman-friendly science and creepy mystery.

Although the details about death are not for the squeamish, Bass’s personable, humorous tone and professional accounts of sleuthing  prevent Death’s Acre from being macabre or sensationalistic and make it an intelligent, entertaining introduction to forensic science.

Cummins, Jeanine. A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder and Its Aftermath.
On April 4, 1991, Jeanine Cummins’ brother, Tom, and their two cousins, 22-year-old Julie Kerry and her 20-year-old sister, Robin, snuck out together for a last night of fairly tame fun before the Cummins family returned home to Washington, D.C. On that night, in St. Louis, Missouri, Julie and Robin led Tom to the long- abandoned Chain of Rocks Bridge—a favorite hangout among locals.

On a night that should have been a casual, friendly end to a weeklong family vacation, Julie and Robin Kerry lost their lives and Tom Cummins suddenly found himself accused of their murders.

The Kerry sisters and Tom Cummins were approached on the bridge that night by four young men who at first just made small talk, but later returned for what would turn out to be the worst night of the three cousins’ lives.

Jeanine Cummins skillfully retells that story of her cousins’ murders and the impact of their deaths on her family—especially on Tom, who endured a harrowing interrogation in the aftermath of the murders as the police tried in vain to elicit a confession from him. Despite her direct connection to the murders, Jeanine Cummins maintains an objective, reporter’s stance, creating a story that reads like a cross between a New Yorker article and a novel. Only when she occasionally writers about her own involvement in the events and refers to herself in the third person does her narration become slightly awkward.

Most powerfully, Cummins’ story is a thorough, birds-eye view of how violent crime impacts its victims—in particular, those who survive and must cope with the loss of their loved ones and their own feelings of guilt. By examining her family’s response to their loss as she gradually reveals how the case unfolds and is eventually solved, Cummins creates a thoughtful, even poignant, thriller.

The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker

            Douglas, the FBI’s (now retired) most successful criminal profiler, describes ten of his recent cases in this collection, explaining as he does what motivates people to kill others, commit arson, and run afoul of the law.  Featured in this collection are details of the Lynnwood church arsonist’s crimes, an analysis of the mass murder of Kindergartners in Scotland, the still-unsolved Tylenol tampering murders, and the story of the Unabomber’s capture among others. His stories are gripping, insider accounts that will keep you up all night and leave you sleeping with the lights on. If you like true crime, you’ll enjoy this book and his others:  Obsession: The FBI’s Legendary Profiler Probes the Psyches of Killers, Rapists and Stalkers and Their Victims and Tells How to Fight Back; Mindhunter, and Journey into Darkness, all of which explain how the FBI profiles and catches killers.

Jackson, Steve. No Stone Unturned:  The True Story of NecroSearch International, the World’s Premier Forensic Investigators. 

I have something of a fascination with mysterious disappearances, murders, and the science used to find victims and perpetrators.  I'm a sucker for every mysterious vanishing that hits the news, I'll admit, and I'm totally guilty of reading true crime late at night and then being forced to sleep with the lights on. I can't help myself.  I love unanswered questions and I love it even more when they are finally answered, especially when the solution is the result of human ingenuity, effort, and scientific achievement.

It’s no surprise then, that one of my recent favorite reads was No Stone Unturned, which covers the development of NecroSearch International, an organization of scientists who assist local, state, and federal agents when a homicide is suspected but a body cannot be located. Working together with a wide variety of equipment, skills, and background training, these scientists—a geologist, a physicist, a botanist, an entomologist, and an anthropologist, among others--take data from law enforcements officials to stake out areas where bodies are suspected to be located and assist them in recovering remains. They often participate in the investigation further by examining the remains and the burial site for clues that may incriminate suspects, and later frequently testify at trials about the science used to find remains and pinpoint perpetrators.

Much of what NecroSearch has learned since its inception in the early 90’s has been the result of direct experience—information they’ve learned while on a case. But they are known in the law enforcement community as the “Pig People” for their early training sessions, in which they buried pig cadavers in order to study decay and other aspects of body disposal and recover (pigs share much DNA with humans, are about the same size, and decompose similarly). One of the main things they have learned is that time is often their friend. Although families go for years, tormented by not knowing what has happened to their loved ones, this can aid in a search, because technology and science progress in the meantime, and may aid them later in recovery, identification, and prosecution (advances in DNA typing are an example of this). 

Steve Jackson makes No Stone Unturned especially interesting by integrating information about NecroSearch and its development into stories about specific homicides the group has helped solved. The first case they were seriously involved in was the 1974 murder of 25-year-old hiker Michelle Wallace, who disappeared in Colorado.  For nearly 20 years, police gathered clues and tips, but came no closer to finding Wallace’s body.  It wasn’t until they contacted NecroSearch that they were able to finally close the case and prosecute Wallace’s murder. Similarly, Jackson covers other murders and details the group’s involvement in solving them, including the murder of a woman who was buried in her own backyard, a woman whose body was sealed in the trunk of a car and then sunk, and several other fascinating cases.

True crime makes many people uncomfortable, but it makes me hopeful.  Although of the more than 15,000 murders that occur annually in the United States, over a third are never solved.  It’s a relief to know that the remainder are solved and the guilty parties punished.  It’s especially inspiring to learn how science continues to find new ways to address old problems.  

Leveritt, Mara. Devil’s Knot:  The True Story of the West Memphis Three. ©2002 (Non-Fiction/True Crime).

In West Memphis, Arkansas, on the evening of May 5, 1993, three eight-year-old boys disappeared after school one day. The next morning, their naked, badly beaten bodies were found hogtied in a local ditch. One of the boys had been castrated.

One month later, police in West Memphis arrested three local teens, Jessie Misskelly, Jr., Damien Echols, and Jason Baldwin. and charged them with the slayings of Christopher Byers, Michael Moore, and Stevie Branch, alleging that witnesses had placed them near Robin Hood Hills, where the bodies were found, on the evening the boys disappeared.  Police also alleged that the three suspects’ involvement in Satanic worship was a motive in the killings, although they had no physical evidence, either from the crime scene nor the suspects’ homes, to prove that any of the teens were involved in Satanic worship.

The prosecution’s case hinged on a confession given by Jessie Misskelly, who was interrogated for 12 hours after his arrest without a lawyer or a parent present, and whose IQ of 72 may have contributed to his inability to ask for legal representation and may also have made him especially vulnerable to police pressure. Misskelly retracted his confession almost immediately, and transcripts show that questions he was asked were leading and that his responses are confused and often conflict with known facts about the murders.

 Echols, who admitted to practicing the Wiccan religion, insisted on his innocence and on the non-violent nature of his religious beliefs to no avail and was charged with triple homicide.  Baldwin, Echols’ best friend, also insisted he was innocent, and no physical evidence linked him to either the crime or to Satanism. Police, however, claimed that his supposed allegiance to Damien, his interest in heavy metal music (particularly the group Metallica) and the fact that he dressed in black (he owned 12 black t-shirts) were reason enough to charge him, and they did so.

The three accused were tried in two trials:  Misskelly was tried separately from Echols and Baldwin, due to his incriminating confession, and he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.  He refused to testify against Baldwin and Echols, who were tried together, despite lawyers’ claims that Baldwin’s right to a fair trial was tainted by allegations that were made only about Echols.  Both Echols and Baldwin were found guilty.  Echols was sentenced to death. Baldwin received life in prison.

The case attracted national attention due to its grisly nature and the allegations of Satanic Ritual Abuse, but also because it was the subject of an award-winning documentary produced for HBO entitled Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. The filmmakers gained access to the trial as well as access to the accused, their families, and the families of the victims. Once aired, the documentary reveals a flawed justice system, incomplete and misleading testimony, a lack of evidence, and—intriguingly—a likely suspect:  the stepfather of Christopher Byers, John Mark Byers, a man with a history of familial abuse and a shaky alibi for the night of the murders.

The film makes obvious the lack of evidence against the accused and raises questions about the methods used by police and their bizarre allegations of ritual abuse.  Following its release, supporters of the three teens began rallying to get them a new trial.  Three supporters, angered by the trial footage and cognizant of the mistakes made by prosecutors and police, began to rally support for Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelly, and have since established a website, www.wm3.org, which is attempting to garnish financial and moral support for the three men (now all in their late twenties). Numerous musicians have lent support to the cause, including Pearl Jam, who wrote a song about Echols and organized a CD of songs by various artists, donating proceeds the defense of the “West Memphis Three.”  Henry Rollins has also lent support to the cause, and has new CD out, the proceeds of which will benefit the West Memphis Three’s defense as it attempts to get the men a new trial.

Leveritt’s account of the case is unapologetically forthright about the injustices she—and many others—believe exist in the arrest and trials of the three young men, but her investigation into the events surrounding the murders, arrests, trials, and follow-up questions posed by concerned people has been thorough and tireless. Not only did she examine the massive documents that are public record, she interviewed key players on both sides of the case in extensive detail, and has presented a thorough account of the entire case from its beginning up until late 2002.  Readers unfamiliar with the HBO documentaries (Paradise Lost was followed up by a second film, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, which focuses almost exclusively on John Mark Byers and his potential role in the killings) will find that the book, while slanted toward the convicted men, nevertheless presents the case without preachiness.  For the most part, she relays the facts, using documents and firsthand interviews, and allows readers to draw their own conclusions.

The case of the West Memphis Three is disturbing, most of all because it revolves around the horrible murders of three small children, but also because of what it shows about the justice system and its fallibility, and because of its allegations of Satanism and the charges made against the three teens on the basis of this “Satanic Panic.” Accusations against individuals—many that resulted in arrests and some in convictions—were rampant in the U.S. in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and sadly, the case of Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelly may be yet another case of how prosecutors were and the public became embroiled in a sort of mass hysteria that has been compared to the mob mentality that resulted in the Salem Witch Trials.

In conjunction with the two videos, Devil’s Knot is a fascinating account of questionable justice, and readers are encouraged to examine Leveritt’s account as well as the videos as they consider this case and its implications. Readers looking for a satisfying conclusion may be disappointed.  The case of the West Memphis Three is, at least for the three men and their supporters, still in progress. Damien Echols awaits execution and Jessie Miskelly and Jason Baldwin are spending their lives in jail.    

Although some readers--and librarians--may find the descriptions of the crime disturbing, Leveritt is careful to offer information about them only as needed to tell the complete story. Her account is factual and avoids sensationalism. Because of the allegations of Satanism and the age of the three teens, as well as the support they have received from well-known musicians, teen readers will find Devil's Knot an intriguing read.

Ramsland, Katherine. The Forensic Science of CSI.  © 2001.
Fans of the popular TV show, “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” will find Ramsland’s behind-the-scenes examination of the science used by characters in the show informative, if not particularly entertaining. Ramsland provides clear, reader-friendly explanations of forensic scientists’ main tools, including DNA analysis, finger print and blood spatter analysis, psychological profiling, and many more.

Frequent references to specific episodes of the TV program help connect viewers of the show with specific examples of how the science is used, but you don’t necessarily need to have seen the show to understand the book. Ramsland provides some examples of true crimes and the science used to solve them, but the examples are very general and not detailed enough, or written in an interesting enough way usually.

Readers might find this book a useful companion to the show and a dictionary of sorts for understanding the terms and techniques they see on TV or read about in other true crime books.

Roach, Mary.  Stiff:  The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.  © 2003.  (Non-Fiction).

“Cadavers are our superheroes:  They brave fire without flinching, withstand falls from tall buildings and head-on car crashes into walls,” writes Mary Roach, “You can fire a gun at them or run a speedboat over their legs, and it will not faze them.  Their heads can be removed with no deleterious effect.  They can be in six places at once.  I take the Superman point of view:  What a shame to waste these powers, to not use them for the betterment of humankind.”

Mary Roach, whose writing has appeared in GQ, Salon, Discover, and many other magazines, explores the wide variety of ways that human corpses are used after death.  In a book that could have been morbid and disgusting, Roach manages to handle the subject with humor and insight, creating a revealing picture of existence after death as well as an inquiry in what it means to be human and what it means to be dead.

“Death doesn’t have to be boring,” Roach writes in her introduction. “There are those who will disagree with me, who feel that to do anything other than bury or cremate the dead is disrespectful…there is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.  Being dead is absurd.  It’s the silliest situation you’ll ever find yourself in.” Besides commentary about the absurdities of death, Roach focuses the majority of her attention on the contributions that are made by cadavers that have been donated to science. She begins with a visit to a plastic surgery convention, where doctors, learning new techniques, each practice on a decapitated head.  “For the moment, you can’t see their faces,” Roach observes.  “They’ve been draped with white cloths, pending the arrival of the surgeons...you see only the tops of heads, which are shaved to stubble. You could be looking at rows of old men reclining in barber chairs with hot towels on their heads.” She continues by discussing the variety of ways cadavers are used by anatomy classes and segues into a chapter about the historical use of cadavers, including the once-lucrative crime of body snatching.

Bodies, once donated, are used for far more than plastic surgery practice and anatomy classes. Perhaps one of the most valuable uses in recent years has been automobile safety crash tests.  Roach discovers, on a visit to a car-safety test location, that human cadavers make better crash test subjects than dummies because they show more realistically how bodies are injured in crashes.  Cadavers are credited with saving 8500 lives every year since 1987. 

Besides car crashes, Roach also explores the use of cadavers in tests that help determine the causes of plane crashes, and in multiple other experiments—mostly historical—that were conducted to determine everything from the existence of the soul to the feasibility of head transplants. In addition, she spends a chapter at the “body farm”—the University of Tennessee’s Anthropological Research Facility—where donated cadavers are exposed to various conditions to examine decay and help forensic pathologists and other researchers establish cause and time of death data essential to solving homicides. Through all of it, Roach maintains a sense of humor that pokes fun at the absurdity of the situations, but she never fails to point out how seemingly ridiculous past experiences have taught scientists, doctors, and forensic experts much about how people die, but more importantly, how they live and how their lives can be improved.

In the final chapters, she examines not only how bodies decay, but how they are preserved after death, and better still, how bodies can be recycled or disposed of in more ecologically friendly methods than the traditional embalming and casketing or cremation, all of which have the potential to pollute the environment.  New methods, Roach discovers in her research, reduce human cadavers to liquid and dust, or recycle the body into compost, producing far less waste than traditional disposal methods, and in some cases, finding a more useful purpose for bodies after death.

Roach spends some time analyzing the biology and chemistry of decay, the after-existences of the corpse, and the myriad ways humans go on affecting the world after death, not to poke fun, but to afford humans the same dignity after death that they enjoyed while they were alive.  She acknowledges the squeamishness of her mission, but says she doesn’t mind learning even the most challenging facts about human decomposition.  “Life contains these things: leakage and wickage and discharge, pus and snot and slime and gleet. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget,” she writes. Ironically, Stiff almost assures that readers won’t be able to forget.  Roach reminds us, in a variety of fascinating ways and with an insightful and unique humor, of who we are and what we are to become.

Sachs, Jessica Snyder. Corpse:  Nature, Forensics, and the Struggle to Pinpoint the Time of Death.  (Non-Fiction/True Crime, Forensics).

Taking yet another angle on the intricacies of forensic science (recently, other writers and scientists have written about forensic anthropology, forensic psychology, fingerprinting, and much more), Jessica Sachs explores the history of the scientific quest to develop an accurate way to determine time of death and perfect it for use in the courtroom.

In opening chapters, she focuses on the earliest methods used for determining the time of death of a person:  body temperature and stomach contents. She describes scientists’ efforts to chart the temperature of an expired body and to apply those temperatures consistently - an effort which never proved truly successful, as researchers discovered again and again that too many variables affected the rate at which a body cools to make this a consistent method for determining time of death. The same was found to be true of stomach contents. Though more regular than body temperature, the rate at which food is absorbed into a person’s body varies with their age, weight, fitness level, and what they ate, so developing a standard is difficult.

As she discusses in the remainder of the book, however, scientists have learned that the most accurate method for determining time of death is to examine the creatures who take up residence in the body after death:  the maggots of various species of flies who are attracted to, and begin consuming, a corpse in a predictable period of time after death.  Sachs describes the studies that have been conducted to perfect the science of forensic entomology in riveting (although sometimes repulsive) detail, including explaining the studies done at the now infamous “Body Farm”-the only research facility of its kind in the world-where corpses are subjected to a variety of outdoor conditions in order for scientists to examine how they decompose.

Sachs ends with information about some of the newest forensic technology: forensic botany, in which plant life around corpses is studied for clues, and  the study of “dirty dirt”-the soil beneath bodies that contains bodily fluids released from cadavers, much of which contains microscopic clues about the person’s demise.

Throughout the book, Sachs focuses on individual scientists who have made and are making progress in the field of forensic sciences, and how their research is having an impact on criminology -being using to solve crimes and convict criminals. Her use of true life cases keeps the science intriguing and helps show how it is applied in specific circumstances. A must-read for anyone truly fascinated by forensic science and an intriguing read for students interested in applied science.