In this book, forensics expert Dr. Henry Lee and co-author Thomas W. O'Neil present analyses of five different sensational murder cases Lee has investigated over the years, including that of O.J. Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. They describe the lives and marriages of each of the victims using information drawn mostly newspaper articles and other books. Even while dealing with the tiniest pieces of physical evidence--blood spatter patterns, seminal fluids, gunshot residue--the authors never lose sight of the victims as human beings with dreams, hopes and desires.

The subject of forensics is outside of my usual reading because of misgivings about sensationalism on the one hand and seeing a human being reduced to bits and pieces on the other. However, I'm relieved and grateful that Dr. Lee's book is much more than that. While it is primarily an attempt to educate the public as to how forensics investigations work (a subject which I personally don't know a whole lot about), it is also a very pointed call for dealing with domestic abuse. In one case, a man murdered his pregnant wife then turned the air conditioner in the bedroom up to full blast before leaving on a sailing trip with friends to make her time of death more difficult to determine. At the conclusion of the chapter describing the crime, the authors write:

"Though a college professor, Edward Sherman had displayed, over the decade leading up to his wife's murder and beyond, a violent side, one particularly directed at women. His conviction should serve as a benchmark in placing domestic abuse in the proper perspective. This is a profoundly serious genre of crime, one which authorities today take very seriously. Perhaps, if Sherman had been dealt with earlier in his life, Ellen Cooper Sherman would still be alive and the mother of second child, the convicted man would not have died in prison in disgrace, and the couple's daughter would never have been orphaned at so tender an age."

Please read the rest of the review here.

In some ways the book is more like an inefficient autobiography than a book about criminology. This goes into some detail about forensics, but it is an unfortunate amount; there is not enough science background to be useful to anyone who knows the topic, but more than anyone who isn't already deeply invested in it needs to know. If the crimes were presented differently, it would be good reading as a group of miniature mysteries, but the mysteriousness of each is sucked out quickly when he presents the conclusion upfront. Then there are the similarities between the cases, which I don't feel I need to get into in detail, but they suggest a deeper story here than the author is willing to investigate. Surely he chose the cases on purpose, but the repeated correspondences only elicit a couple of off-hand remarks. Meh.