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A review by druknduck
The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths are Solving America's Coldest Cases by Deborah Halber
2.0
*Disclosure: I received this book from a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.*
1. This book jumps all over the place in terms of narration, and I'm not quite sure what type of book this is supposed to be. Is it an expose into the world of online cold case hunters, the ins and outs and the hidden drama behind the scenes? Is it an investigation into the "hidden crises" of unknown and missing people in the United States, and the problem trying to find them justice? Is it about the author solving a missing person case herself (more on this later)? There seems to be multiple narratives throughout this book, and none of them stick.
2. Multiple missing person cases are detailed as being solved in the book, but there are inconsistencies in how they are presented. Some cases are introduced and solved in two paragraphs; others take whole chapters; some are used to set up the background of the person that the author is interviewing at the moment; and in the case of Tent Girl, introduced in the beginning of the book in what looked to be the case that would tie everything together and with the investigation and solution lasting the whole book, only for the identity of Tent Girl be casually revealed two-thirds of the way through the book, almost as an aside. Tone was very inconsistent between the ways each case was handled by the author.
3. Unless I missed the reveal (which is possible, because the writing style is so odd), but the other main case in the book, that of the Lady of the Dunes, remained unsolved at the end of the book. There seems to be a mention of a couple of potential IDs for the body, but, again, the way the names of the bodies were revealed in the book made it really hard sometimes to figure out what had been written. An index at the back of the book to search for names would have been helpful.
4. Halber litters the book with personal observations of the people and places that she visits in her research, and almost all of them are off-putting and degrading in some fashion. There is an idea that comes out from reading this book that everything outside of New York or Boston is in some way inferior and not meant to be taken as seriously as it could be. From the description of the "troll woman" climbing hotel stairs to a forensic examiner that can (incredibly) dress in tailored suits, to multiple mentions of hillbillies and rednecks, these descriptions take away from what should be the main focus of the book: the dead bodies themselves.
5. There are two points in this book where the author states that she wishes she could solve a cold case, which makes me wonder if she went into this book thinking that a) there was nothing difficult about doing so, and that b) it was, or could be treated as, the same as playing a game. It makes me wonder if she ever took this book seriously.
6. This has nothing to do with the premise of the book, but as I was reading this I was coming up with the impression that, while this book was thoroughly researched, the author wasn't the best writer. And then she writes (on page 100) that "... The Who guitarist John Entwistle died of a cocaine-induced heart attack." And that one typo (Entwistle played bass) made me question how thorough her research really had been.
I was very happy to have won a copy of this book in a giveaway and was hoping it was as good as it looked. And while Deborah Halber seems to have done her homework in researching this topic, it comes across as very boring and dull, which is not something I would think I would say about a book that discusses solving cold cases. I think this book could have been done better as a series of newspaper articles or possibly a series of essays on a website. Halber has no sense for writing a narrative in book form, and I think some of the problems I had with this book would be solved with a re-write to include a more cohesive narrative.
1. This book jumps all over the place in terms of narration, and I'm not quite sure what type of book this is supposed to be. Is it an expose into the world of online cold case hunters, the ins and outs and the hidden drama behind the scenes? Is it an investigation into the "hidden crises" of unknown and missing people in the United States, and the problem trying to find them justice? Is it about the author solving a missing person case herself (more on this later)? There seems to be multiple narratives throughout this book, and none of them stick.
2. Multiple missing person cases are detailed as being solved in the book, but there are inconsistencies in how they are presented. Some cases are introduced and solved in two paragraphs; others take whole chapters; some are used to set up the background of the person that the author is interviewing at the moment; and in the case of Tent Girl, introduced in the beginning of the book in what looked to be the case that would tie everything together and with the investigation and solution lasting the whole book, only for the identity of Tent Girl be casually revealed two-thirds of the way through the book, almost as an aside. Tone was very inconsistent between the ways each case was handled by the author.
3. Unless I missed the reveal (which is possible, because the writing style is so odd), but the other main case in the book, that of the Lady of the Dunes, remained unsolved at the end of the book. There seems to be a mention of a couple of potential IDs for the body, but, again, the way the names of the bodies were revealed in the book made it really hard sometimes to figure out what had been written. An index at the back of the book to search for names would have been helpful.
4. Halber litters the book with personal observations of the people and places that she visits in her research, and almost all of them are off-putting and degrading in some fashion. There is an idea that comes out from reading this book that everything outside of New York or Boston is in some way inferior and not meant to be taken as seriously as it could be. From the description of the "troll woman" climbing hotel stairs to a forensic examiner that can (incredibly) dress in tailored suits, to multiple mentions of hillbillies and rednecks, these descriptions take away from what should be the main focus of the book: the dead bodies themselves.
5. There are two points in this book where the author states that she wishes she could solve a cold case, which makes me wonder if she went into this book thinking that a) there was nothing difficult about doing so, and that b) it was, or could be treated as, the same as playing a game. It makes me wonder if she ever took this book seriously.
6. This has nothing to do with the premise of the book, but as I was reading this I was coming up with the impression that, while this book was thoroughly researched, the author wasn't the best writer. And then she writes (on page 100) that "... The Who guitarist John Entwistle died of a cocaine-induced heart attack." And that one typo (Entwistle played bass) made me question how thorough her research really had been.
I was very happy to have won a copy of this book in a giveaway and was hoping it was as good as it looked. And while Deborah Halber seems to have done her homework in researching this topic, it comes across as very boring and dull, which is not something I would think I would say about a book that discusses solving cold cases. I think this book could have been done better as a series of newspaper articles or possibly a series of essays on a website. Halber has no sense for writing a narrative in book form, and I think some of the problems I had with this book would be solved with a re-write to include a more cohesive narrative.