Scan barcode
A review by beccakatie
How to Solve a Murder: True Stories from a Life in Forensic Medicine by Pauline Tremain, Derek Tremain
3.0
I’ve been a fan of true crime for years. Watched the documentaries, listened to the podcasts, asked for the t-shirt for Christmas (my mum thought it was tasteless so refused to buy it). So I was so excited to read a behind the scenes account of forensics, to gain an insight into how these murders are solved.
There were highlights throughout this book, but overall I was quite disappointed. The best bits were definitely the actual forensic content, including the identification of boot prints and different injuries. But all too often these chapters were brought to a quick, even abrupt close. It left me feeling like I’d missed something.
I could have done with far less (in fact, absolutely none) discussion about Pauline’s short skirts and how determined she was to keep her nice high heels on. It just felt like inclusion for the sake of giving Pauline something more to say, and was so unnecessary. Although they did help me identify which bits had been written by her, as it did get confusing sometimes as there were no clear ways to differentiate other than context clues and figuring out halfway through the second paragraph.
All in all, this book had a lot of potential, but I feel like it under delivered in terms of actual content.
There were highlights throughout this book, but overall I was quite disappointed. The best bits were definitely the actual forensic content, including the identification of boot prints and different injuries. But all too often these chapters were brought to a quick, even abrupt close. It left me feeling like I’d missed something.
I could have done with far less (in fact, absolutely none) discussion about Pauline’s short skirts and how determined she was to keep her nice high heels on. It just felt like inclusion for the sake of giving Pauline something more to say, and was so unnecessary. Although they did help me identify which bits had been written by her, as it did get confusing sometimes as there were no clear ways to differentiate other than context clues and figuring out halfway through the second paragraph.
All in all, this book had a lot of potential, but I feel like it under delivered in terms of actual content.