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This post written by Clint Unholy Sacrifice
by Robert Scott
[cover name=unholysacrifice]
Students get bonus points in my classes for reviewing books, and sometimes they give me permission to share them on this website. I don’t do much to edit what my students turn in. Sometimes I fix a little error or typo, but basically, what you see is what they wrote. This is the first one I’ve posted.
This book is a true account of five murders that occurred in the Bay Area. The five people were killed by two brothers, Justin & Glenn Helzer, and were accompanied by a third, Dawn Godman. Their scheme to extort money from two of the people was the original motive. The plan eventually ended up taking the lives of three more victims.
I liked this book. It was extremely interesting to me. The lives that these three suspects led were so twisted, and they inevitably included the lives of five victims, unfortunately. It details the horror that the poor people had to go through. It really made me sympathetic towards them.
This is a good book if you’re interested in this particular type of reading. if not, it will seem somewhat harsh. I’m extremely into forensics & investigations, just to try & figure things out. I love the challenge!
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This post written by Clint Wake
by Lisa McMann
[cover name=wake]
Janie Hannagan has a special power, or maybe a curse: whenever someone nearby falls asleep and starts to dream, Janie is sucked into the dream. She gets tag along while somebody flies around, shows up to work naked, or falls and falls and falls. Sounds fun, right? Janie is in high school, so she gets pulled in every time somebody falls asleep in class. She works at a nursing home, so she gets pulled in every time a resident dozes off.
She learns a lot about other people this way. She knows who who has a secret crush on her best friend, for example. She knows that somebody who lives on Waverly Road is really messed up. She knows that Cable, the class slacker, has dreams about her. Then she finds herself in one of Cable’s a really messed up nightmares, and she decides to stop watching and try to fix things.
You should know a few things about this novel before you start. First, a lot of it takes place in the dreams of teenagers. You know what that means. Second, there is a lot of swearing. Third, some people are put off by the writing style. You might want to preview it at Google Books.
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This post written by Clint A Morbid Taste for Bones
by Ellis Peters
[cover name=amorbidtasteforbones]
This is the first in a series of books about Brother Cadfael, an unusual monk who solves mysteries in the twelfth century. Cadfael is Welsh, but he lives in an abbey in Shrewsbury, England. That’s not why he is unusual, though. Cadfael wasn’t born a monk. When he was younger, he took part in the First Crusade. He has seen a lot more of the world than most monks (or most other people in the twelfth century), he knows a lot of unusual things, and he has a knack for noticing little details. He also tends to ignore any rules that get in the way, and he has a very different take on religion and morality than most of his fellow monks.
In A Morbid Taste for Bones, a monk named Columbanus collapses and appears unable to recover his senses. Another monk, Brother Jerome, has a vision: Saint Winifred will cure Brother Columbanus if they take him to where Winifred was killed. This is awfully convenient, since the abbot has been thinking about getting a saint for the abbey. When Saint Winifred actually cures Columbanus, the abbot takes it as a sign from God that Saint Winifred’s remains should be moved from her grave in Wales to the abbey.
A group of monks, including Jerome, Columbanus, and our hero Cadfael, make their way to Wales to pick up Saint Winifred’s remains. This idea isn’t too popular with the local people, who are rather fond of their saint. There is a fierce debate, and before everyone can come to a conclusion, a very important person is murdered. This is about 900 years too early for forensic science, but Cadfael has a few tricks up his sleeve.
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This post written by Clint The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor
by Ken Silverstein
[cover name=theradioactiveboyscout]
How would you like to come home one day and find people from the Environmental Protection Agency in your neighbor’s yard wearing those hazmat suits that they only wear when dealing with some kind of horrible disease or nuclear accident? Well, this actually happened to the residents of Golf Manor, which is near Detroit, Michigan. The folks from the EPA were busy cutting up a shed and sealing away all the parts in big canisters with radioactive warning signs on them.
What happened? Well, the seventeen-year-old boy who lived next door, David Hahn, was building a nuclear reactor in his back yard. Why? Well, he had always loved chemistry, and he may have been worried about the world eventually running out of oil. He was also a boy scout, and he had enjoyed getting his Atomic Energy badge, and he wanted to become an Eagle Scout. Very few scouts become Eagle Scouts, since it involves a really big project. Ideally, the project does not involve breaking federal laws and endangering the lives of 40,000 people, but David figured that making a nuclear reactor would still be the biggest Eagle Scout project ever.
You aren’t supposed to be able to get the material to build a nuclear reactor in the Unite States if you aren’t officially approved by the federal government, but that didn’t stop David. He pretended to be a high school science teacher (and eventually a college professor) when he wrote to various scientists for advice. He got a list of ordinary household items that contain radioactive materials, bought them in bulk, and extracted the radioactive elements. He bought or stole smoke detectors to get americium-241. Apparently he got a hundred broken smoke detectors for $1 each by claiming they were for a school project. He took tiny amounts of tritium from the sights of glow-in-the-dark plastic guns, wrote to the manufacturers claiming the sights were damaged, had them replaced, and took that tritium, too. He scraped the paint off glow-in-the-dark alarm clock hands because it contained radium-226. These clocks don’t really contain a lot of radium, but David managed to find a lot of spare paint in a clock at an antique store.
He used blowtorches, aluminum foil, coffee filters, and other household items to refine the radioactive materials he needed. Amazingly enough, most of his crazy ideas worked. He eventually decided to build a breeder reactor, which is a nuclear reactor that generates power and makes more radioactive fuel for itself. He never got the energy part working, but he did get it to produce more fuel.
Eventually David decided that the dangerous levels of radiation might be a little too dangerous, so he dismantled his reactor and put parts of it in the trunk of his car. While he was doing this, the police showed up. They were looking for a kid who was stealing tires, but they decided to check David out. You can guess what happened when he told them not to open the toolbox because it was radioactive.
There’s much more to the story, but you’ve got to read it yourself. If they put this stuff in a movie (and they might), nobody would believe it.
While this book is about science, it is not a science textbook. There are some big words, but you don’t need to know very much to enjoy the story, and what you do need to know will be explained. Basically, as long as you know that building a nuclear reactor in your bad yard is not a safe idea, you already know most of the science you need. You might even learn a thing or two. Just don’t try this at home.
You can read the first chapter online at the publisher’s website.
This book came from an article that Ken Silverstein wrote for Harper’s Magazine. You an read that article at the Harper’s site.
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This post written by Clint Bad Monkeys
by Matt Ruff
[cover name=badmonkeys]
Jane Charlotte is arrested for murder, but when she tells the police that she is actually a member of a secret organization dedicated to fighting crime, they put her in the psychological ward. Jane claims to be part of a division nicknamed the Bad Monkeys, who are supposed to track down and kill really evil people who have managed to escape justice. Apparently, this secret organization has access to all kinds of nifty stuff, like the NC gun, which kills its victim through natural causes. If you believe Jane (and the police don’t), this secret group hides tiny security cameras in pictures of eyes on posters, dollar bills, etc., and their operatives communicate through the Daily Jumble (that puzzle in the newspaper where you have to unscramble words).
Bad Monkeys is the story Jane tells a psychologist who is trying to find out if she is crazy or just lying. It is part thriller, part science fiction, and part satire. You don’t know if Jane is crazy, if she’s telling the truth, or if she’s crazy and telling the truth until the very end.
If you want, you can read the first chapter online at the author’s website.
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This post written by Clint A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
by Ishmael Beah
[cover name=alongwaygone]
Ishmael Beah grew up in Sierra Leone during its civil war. He and some of his friends have their own rap and dance group, and one day, they all go to another town to take part in a talent show. While they are out, their home town is attacked and destroyed. Ishmael is twelve years old at this point. He and his friends think about going back to find their families, but instead they end up on the run and try to make their way to some safe part of the country. Ishmael is eventually separated and forced to join the army. They brainwash him, give him drugs and an assault rifle, and let him and other children loose on the rebel army and anyone else in the way. Eventually he is released and take care of by UNICEF, but he has seen and done a lot of really bad stuff, and he doesn’t know how to be a normal person anymore. One volunteer finally reaches him through his love of rap music, and he finally begins to recover.
This book has a lot of violence, but it is more about the author’s recovery. It is also written to draw attention to the tragedy of child soldiers – Sierra Leone is not the only country where children have been used this way.
There has been some controversy about this book. Some reporters say that Beah’s dates are wrong, that certain events probably didn’t happen, and that it is unlikely that any one person could have experienced everything that happens in this book. I don’t know the whole story, but you can read about all of this on Wikipedia. Even if this book isn’t the literal truth of what happened to Ishmael Beah, it’s still a moving description of the kinds of awful things that children face in many civil wars.
You can read some of it online at Google Books.
You can watch Ishmael Beah on the Daily Show.
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This post written by Clint The Lies of Locke Lamora
by Scott Lynch
[cover name=theliesoflockelamora]
Locke Lamora is the best thief in the city of Camorr, a city that is kind of like a fantasy version of Venice. As a young child, his parents are killed in a plague. When the city guards come to round up survivors, Locke steals one off their purses. From there, he was sold to a man called the Thiefmaker, who trains orphans to be thieves. Locke’s work is just too much for the Thiefmaker to handle, but rather than kill Locke, the Thiefmaker sells him to a priest named Chains.
Rather than trying to turn Locke into a decent citizen, Chains teaches Locke to be an even better thief. Eventually, Chains assembles a team of outstanding pickpockets, burglars, and con artists. Locke and his friends Jean, Bug, Caldo, and Galdo, are masters of disguise and deception. They can convincingly impersonate nearly anyone, from a priest of the god of death to a nobleman.
Thieves in Camorr must follow a few simple rules set by Capa Barsavi, the crime boss of the city. Among other things, they must give him their allegiance, pay him a portion of their earnings, not draw too much attention (Locke is really bad at this part), and leave the nobility alone (Lock is really, really bad at this one). In return, the city guard pretty much leaves the thieves alone. This is called the Secret Peace,and it works pretty well for the nobility and the thieves, but not for anybody else.
Locke and his friends ignore the secret peace. After all, stealing from the nobility has three huge advantages over stealing from anyone else.
- They’ve got the money.
- They’d never expect it.
- Many of them deserve it.
However, Locke and his pals aren’t the only people breaking the Secret Peace. Thieves are being murdered, but nobody has the faintest idea who is doing it. This throws the criminal underground into chaos just as Locke, Jean, Caldo, Galdo, and Bug are in the middle of the con of a lifetime.
The scams Locke and his friends use in this book are just amazing. They are works of art. This is like Ocean’s Eleven, except much more clever. However, the story is also a lot grittier and more violent. There’s a lot of swearing, and a fair amount of bloodshed. Locke isn’t much of a fighter, but Jean is a big guy who fights with a pair of axes, and he gets to use them on more than one occasion.
The setting for The Lies of Locke Lamora is really elaborate and creative. Scott Lynch has put a lot of detail into the city and the many different cultures of the world. This is a fantasy novel, and while there aren’t a lot of people who can cast spells, there are still plenty of fantastic elements. Another race of creatures ruled the world before recorded human history, and they left amazing artifacts behind. Much of the city is made out of a special material known as Elderglass, which is indestructible and glows just after the sun sets. The towers on the cover shown above are the five main Elderglass towers of Camorr, where the rich and powerful live. Of course, since nobody alive can really work with Elderglass, and since whatever ancient devices once moved people from one floor to another have long since broken down, the nobles of Camorr get around these giant towers in crude wooden elevators slapped onto the sides of the towers.
Alchemy, a fantasy version of science (plus a little magic) is also an important part of the world. Alchemists make poisons and potions, but they also make lights, cooking stones that heat up when you pour water on them, and many more nifty things. Alchemists also help develop new kinds of plants – alchemically enhanced fruit and wine are popular treats among the extremely wealthy.
I haven’t really mentioned the characters yet, but they are really well done. Pretty much everybody is interesting and has a twist and a surprise or two hiding inside. Locke, of course, always has a trick up his sleeve. Jean is a big, chunky, axe-wielding accountant with a soft spot for romance novels. Capa Barsavi was a famous scholar before he took control of Camorr’s underworld. There are too many twists and surprises for me to spoil, but I’ll leave the rest for you.
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This post written by Clint The Spellman Files
by Lisa Lutz
[cover name=thespellmanfiles]
Isabel “izzy” Spellman works for her family’s business. This might seem okay, but her parents run a detective agency out of their house. Working for her parents isn’t that bad. The real problem is living with detectives. Her parents run credit checks on her older sister’s boyfriends, and they bug all their kid’s rooms. Her younger sister does “recreational surveillance,” which is a nice way of saying she spies on random people for fun. Her uncle Ray works for the business, but he has a nasty habit of taking extra-long weekends and forcing the rest of the family to track him down.
Izzy has lousy taste in boyfriends. She dated one guy primarily because he owned every episode of her favorite TV show on DVD. Then she meets a normal guy, Daniel. He’s a dentist, and he doesn’t have to worry about his family members picking the locks on his room and either planting hidden cameras or cutting his hair while he sleeps. Spending time with him makes her reconsider her lifestyle – she likes the detective business, but she realizes she doesn’t like being a detective. She eventually tells her parents she wants out, but they will only agree if she takes one last case…
As you might guess, this is a mix of comedy and mystery. It’s certainly funny, and it does contain a mystery, but the first part of the book is all background. The background is amusing, but the real mystery starts later. Also, her family is a bit over the top, so if you don’t like that kind of humor, you probably won’t enjoy a lot of the book.
If you want, you can read some of the book online at Google Books.
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This post written by Clint A Fly for the Prosecution: How Insect Evidence Helps Solve Crimes
by M. Lee Goff
[cover name=aflyfortheprosecution]
Forensic entomology is the study of insects and how they can be used to solve crimes and settle lawsuits. When did this person die? Were they poisoned? Was the body moved? Can we prove the suspect was at the scene of the crime? If you are a skilled forensic entomologist, you might be able to answer any of these questions and more.
This book combines some personal stories of the author, such as how he stays sane while examining partially decomposed bodies, as well as the history of forensic entomology, a bunch of interesting examples of cases involving insects, and a some explanation of how it all works. He has one chapter that explains how he does his research, which involves lots and lots of pigs, and sometimes illegal drugs. Apparently, one conversation with a Drug Enforcement Agency officer started with, “Oh, you again.” Another chapter describes the different insects that show up as a body decomposes. If you know the cycle, you can often tell how long ago someone died.
If you aren’t easily bothered by maggots and decaying bodies, and if you really like CSI-stuff, you will probably like this book. It’s not a textbook, but you will learn a lot of neat stuff. It includes a lot of details and science, but it’s still very interesting.
You can read some of it online at Google Books.
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This post written by Clint Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist
by William R. Maples and Michael Browning
[cover name=deadmendotelltales]
If you like CSI or other shows like that, you might want to check out Dead Men Do Tell Tales. William Maples was a forensic anthropologist (someone who studies human remains to try to find out the cause of death and other things like that) and he talks about many different cases he has worked on. Some of the more famous ones include examining the remains of the Elephant Man, seeing if the 12th President of the United States, Zachary Taylor, was poisoned, and flying to Ekaterinburg, Russia, to tell whether nine skeletons there are those of the last members of the Russian royal family.
If you are uncomfortable reading about suicide, murder, or decomposing bodies, you should skip this book. I don’t think Maples goes out of his way to gross anyone out, but he is talking about dead bodies. On the other hand, if you’ve ever wondered how you can identify someone after they have been cremated, how you tell if someone was murdered or committed suicide, how you tell if a skeleton is from a man or a woman, or how you tell which particular brand of saw was used to dismember a body, this might be the book for you.
This is not a textbook. It is more like a biography that focuses on interesting cases Maples has had. He talks about his early life, how he got into forensic anthropology, as well as stories about his work and some general information about forensic anthropology. You get enough of the details to understand the big idea, but Maples mostly focuses on the story. You won’t learn how to do any of the stuff they talk about on CSI, but you should get a better idea of what they are talking about.
If you want to read some of the book online, you can do that thanks to Google Books.
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