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74 reviews for:
The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths are Solving America's Coldest Cases
Deborah Halber
3.18 AVERAGE
74 reviews for:
The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths are Solving America's Coldest Cases
Deborah Halber
3.18 AVERAGE
The topic is very interesting, everyday people solving cold cases that professionals couldn't solve. A premise that could easily have been 4-5 stars. But I didn't like the way book was written, it was to messy and to all over the place and not very readable.
The subject matter of this book is compelling. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite live up to its potential. The book is composed of a series of vignettes, but the vignettes are interwoven, often making it difficult to keep the players and individual stories and facts straight. Frequently, there also were extraneous descriptors and details that detract from the stories. Overall, it's a great concept for a book, but the writing is not as tight as it could be.
The content is somewhat interesting (second half is better than the first) but the author tried to get fancy and do some Kurt Vonnegut style jumping around between stories. It doesn't work and makes for some annoying reading.
I loved the idea of this book...the fact that there are load of amateur sleuths out there that pore over the Internet, matching unidentified remains with missing persons, is kind of crazy and interesting at the same time. Some of the matches these people have made and the time they spend on it is mind boggling. It definitely sparked me to poke around on the Web a bit, though I draw the line at trying to find photos of remains. The hard part of the book was that it was so non-linear, that it was hard for me to keep track of where the author was. She jumped from case to case and then, mid-case, jumped to another, only to come back to it several chapters later. There were tons of people to keep track of and that made it difficult for me. Also, one of the main cases that she profiled had such an ambiguous resolution that I was left confused. So, mixed review, but worth the read. If you are into this kind of stuff.
adventurous
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
I spent a year trying to finish this book before finally giving up. I loved the premise and the first chapter seemed promising, but then that same material was rehashed over and over and over again. I felt like I was rereading the same chapter, just reformatted. I got the impression that the author has a great idea for a book, soon realized she didn't have nearly enough material to make it novel length, then kept going anyway. Also, I got incredibly tired of reading the word "sleuth".
Hard to follow the format with all the stories intertwined. Too many characters. Good storytelling though for the smaller stories that were contained in a few pages.
The Skeleton Crew by Deborah Hallber
This book is all about internet sleuths and arm chair detectives. It was an insight on how the Doe Network and Nameus got started where thousands of people could look at unidentified bodies and evidence then try to match with a missing person case.
In the book they cover a story about a young mother who was found deceased and bound in a tent like bag back in May 1968. Years go by with out her identity being discovered until Todd Mathews comes on the scene just an average joe who painstakingly uncovers who tent girl is.
For anyone who watches true crime, reads true crim this was a very fascinating look into a world I knew very little about.
This book is all about internet sleuths and arm chair detectives. It was an insight on how the Doe Network and Nameus got started where thousands of people could look at unidentified bodies and evidence then try to match with a missing person case.
In the book they cover a story about a young mother who was found deceased and bound in a tent like bag back in May 1968. Years go by with out her identity being discovered until Todd Mathews comes on the scene just an average joe who painstakingly uncovers who tent girl is.
For anyone who watches true crime, reads true crim this was a very fascinating look into a world I knew very little about.