The Skeleton Crew

How amateur sleuths are solving America's coldest cases

by

285 pages

English language

Published Dec. 18, 2014

ISBN:
978-1-4516-5758-6
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OCLC Number:
857370318

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(2 reviews)

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.

3 editions

reviewed The Skeleton Crew by Deborah Halber

Review of 'The Skeleton Crew' on 'Goodreads'

It was a bit confusing and hard to keep track of cases and names, since there were often multiple cases in one chapter, with no clear reason as to why a new case started and how it connected to the rest of the chapter.
Also I get that the Tent Girl case was supposed to wrap it all up and provide a nice scaffolding for the story, but it didn't really work.
I liked the general idea, though, and it's a topic I can see Mary Roach excel in.

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Subjects

  • Cold cases (Criminal investigation)
  • Citizen participation
  • Criminal investigation

Places

  • United States