Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
True crime

THE SKELETON CREW

Deborah Halber

How Amateur Sleuths Are Solving America’s Coldest Cases

THE SKELETON CREW takes readers into a previously unexplored Internet subculture where amateur sleuths work to solve cold cases, matching missing persons with unidentified remains around the country and sometimes, the world.

Until twenty years ago, police departments kept basic local files on cold cases they hoped to solve and often gave up completely on others. Now, a growing cadre of web sleuths—armed with little more than laptops—have completely changed this system, dumping copious amounts of information online, sometimes with questionable legality. And they have actually solved an astonishing number of cases. Like everything else, the internet has completely turned the world of criminal investigation upside down.
Deborah Halber, a native New Yorker, received her B.A. from Brandeis University and an M.A. in journalism from New York University. A member of the National Association of Science Writers, she has worked for both Tufts and MIT, chronicling their breakthroughs in neuroscience, molecular biology, energy, and technology.

Available products
Book Published 2014-07-01 by Simon
Book Published 2014-07-01 by Simon

Comments

Halber’s artful sleuthing into this little-known demimonde leaves one bloodthirsty for more.

A compelling glimpse into a little-known subculture inhabited by a colorful cast of the idiosyncratic, the quirky, and the downright weird.

The Skeleton Crew is a carefully crafted account of an intriguing new opportunity for arm chair sleuths. Thanks to the Internet, anyone with a computer, curiosity, patience, and a passion for justice can enter the dark world of missing persons and unsolved homicides. It’s fascinating to learn how such matches are made and heartening to witness the growing cooperation between law enforcement and ordinary citizens whose persistence can sometimes crack the code in cold cases that have languished unresolved for years. I loved it.

An integral component of NamUs is the group of responsible, dedicated volunteers who scour case details in an effort to match long-term missing persons to unidentified decedents. In The Skeleton Crew, Deborah Halber follows the journey of some of these volunteers who have made it their mission to assist criminal justice professionals in resolving those cases.

In this highly addictive story-within-a-story narrative, Deborah Halber skillfully exposes the complex Internet subculture of amateur sleuths. The people who obsess over the fates and identities of Jane and John Does are puzzles in themselves, which adds a fascinating layer to this captivating book. The Skeleton Crew will likely inspire many more case resolutions.

A lively study that’s part whodunit, part sociological study. . . . The result is eminently entertaining and will be devoured by armchair detectives Read more...

From home-computer screens to a new national database, join The Skeleton Crew for a page-turning behind-the-scenes look at the world of Internet sleuths who give names to the men and women who have died without identity. For the first time ever, readers are brought the real-life cases of missing persons, the unidentified dead, and the network of people that gives them their names . . . proving once again what I said at the conclusion of every episode of America’s Most Wanted: ‘One person can make a difference.

Exploring the world of amateur sleuths, Halber proves to be the perfect guide: unflinching, perceptive, wry. I was hooked from page one