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The skeleton crew : how amateur sleuths are solving America's coldest cases Cover Image Book Book

The skeleton crew : how amateur sleuths are solving America's coldest cases

Halber, Deborah (Author).

Summary: In America today, upwards of forty thousand people are dead and unaccounted for. These murder, suicide, and accident victims, separated from their names, are being adopted by the bizarre online world of amateur sleuths. It's DIY CSI. The web sleuths pore over facial reconstructions (a sort of Facebook for the dead) and other online clues as they vie to solve cold cases and tally up personal scorecards of dead bodies. The Skeleton Crew delves into the macabre underside of the Internet, the fleeting nature of identity, and how even the most ordinary citizen with a laptop and a knack for puzzles can reinvent herself as a web sleuth.

Record details

  • ISBN: 1451657595 (pbk.)
  • ISBN: 9781451657593 (pbk.)
  • ISBN: 9781451657609 (ebk.)
  • ISBN: 1451657587 (hbk.)
  • ISBN: 9781451657586 (hbk.)
  • Physical Description: 285 pages ; 24 cm
    print
  • Edition: First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
  • Publisher: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note: Includes bibliographical references.
Formatted Contents Note: Prologue: The well driller -- The ultimate identity crisis -- You can disappear here -- It's the ethernet, my dear Watson -- Ghost girls -- Bring out your dead -- Inside Reefer 2 -- The perks of being ornery -- Seekers of lost souls -- How to make a John Doe -- Finding Bobbie Ann -- Quackie is dead -- The head in the bucket -- The hippie and the lawman -- The oldest unsolved case in Massachusetts -- Relief, sadness, success -- Epilogue.

Search for related items by subject

Subject: Criminal investigation United States Citizen participation
Cold cases (Criminal investigation) United States

Available copies

  • 1 of 1 copy available at Kenton County.

Holds

  • 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show Only Available Copies
Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Status Due Date
Covington Branch 363.25 H157s 2014 (Text) 33126019608060 Adult Nonfiction Available -
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  • Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2014 August #1

    Journalist Halber introduces readers to the unusual world of web sleuthing: in this case, crowdsourcing the task of comparing the thousands of reports of missing persons to those of unidentified remains in the hopes of finding a match and bringing closure to families searching for lost loved ones. The author paints a colorful picture of armchair investigators pursuing their first "solves" amid the conflicting motivations of their peers and of various law enforcement agencies—the infighting of the online missing-persons communities is effectively juxtaposed with the red tape and politics of real-world departments and policymakers. Perhaps unintentionally, Halber's decision to intermingle various cases and sprinkle the result with a large cast of characters evokes what one imagines is the same feeling a web sleuth gets hopping from one missing-persons report to another, looking for connections. The occasional bizarre similes don't overly detract from an intriguing invitation to help mitigate a "silent mass disaster" that few are even aware has happened. VERDICT Puzzle fans, true crime aficionados, and heavy users of Internet forums will appreciate Halber's shout-out to aspiring consulting detectives.—Ricardo Laskaris, York Univ. Lib., Toronto

    [Page 109]. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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