One of my colleagues brought this book to me, because she thought I might like it. The title alone piqued my interest, so I gave it a try. The author starts off by debunking a few myths about crime scene investigation. She explains that real CSIs don’t wear mini-skirts and heels to work and they don’t interrogate criminals back at the precinct. Real CSIs collect evidence from the scene of a crime, which could involve anything from a homicide to vandalism. Much of the work is conducted behind the scenes, in a lab, analyzing evidence.
If you’d like to learn more about the real work these people do, then this book is for you, but it is definitely not for the squeamish. Kollmann’s stories can be quite graphic and they all have an element of truth (people’s names and some of the cases have been changed slightly to protect the innocent, and guilty I suspect). The author writes about some of her more interesting cases, including the one that is the premise of the title. Yes, she did get a dead man’s hand stuck in her mouth (ewww, gross!). She was also hit by flying body parts, almost attacked by a firefighter’s drunken wife, held hostage by a dingo on top of a washing machine, and saw many dead bodies in compromising positions. No topic is too taboo for this author.
Check the WRL catalog for Never Suck a Dead Man’s Hand.
