Customer Reviews

Never Suck A Dead Man's Hand: Curious Adventures of a CSI

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The further along I got in this book, the more I disliked the author. I worked in the criminal justice field for thirty-four years (not as a police officer or a forensic person, by the way) and she typifies the kind of person who gives us all a bad name. Smug, self-important, and arrogant. So quick to denigrate the public she was supposed to serve. In Chapter Seven she meets a pair of poor souls, an obviously mentally disordered mother and son. As they started running away from her she says "I split open with laughter..I snickered as Jimmy...loaded down with bags and sliping on the icy sidewalk, tried to keep pace with his mother...His mother was a fruit loop--but poor Jimmy, if he were any dumber, he'd have to be watered."

In the same chapter, she meets another mentally challenged individual, whom she nicknames Frodo because of his feet. His house is dirty. Here's another excerpt: "I continued dusting [for fingerprints], not even caring that I was using my dirty brush. This was the brush I saved for gross things, like powdering toilet seats. I didn't like to use the filty, germ-laden thing...inside people's homes, but Frodo had asked for it. I was tempted to cover the earpiece and mouthpiece of his telephone with fingerprint powder so he'd walk around town with a black face just because he annoyed me."

Does this sound like a professional person to you? There are many, many more incidents like those mentioned above, including a gratuitous bit of nastiness to a funeral home receptionist. She also documents times when, while on duty, she went home to tend to personal business. She knew she was doing wrong because she was worried about being "caught" at home. If she had worked for me, she would have been gone. I think I understand at least partly why her training detectives at the beginning didn't like her (you know, the ones she called the "defectives.")

Add this to chapters on her mother's quirks, and a half a chapter devoted to toilet habits of people she worked with (I'm not kidding) and I was disgusted. Usually when I finish a book, it either goes on my bookshelf or gets donated to the library. This one is going in the trash.

This book is filled with personal anecdotes of a former crime scene investigator. There's not much you learn from this book except that the work of a CSI is neither glamorous nor desirable. The book is 260 pages long and it really seems like the author had to dig deep to find stories to tell because most of the stories are very boring. There's one story of how the author had to buy enough coffins to house sixteen skeletons. There was a lot of confusion with the funeral home employee, but it seemed like the author could have cleared up the confusion by just telling the employee the exact purpose of her purchase. Instead she relished in the confusion to exasperate the funeral home employee. This kind of meanness permeates the book. There is an attempt at dark humor, if you can really make fun of decomposing bodies and disgusting stenches. This is hardly an account of how a CSI works in general. It's just one person's account of how she coped with a job that apparently was distasteful for her. The book was disappointing.

The book is interesting in a morbid way, as the author tells gross stories about awful things that she has investigated. However, in my opinion, her chatty and rambling writing style is more tiresome than funny, like listening to a teenage girl rattle on about cute guys for several hours. I'd agree with the other reviewer that her presentation is not very professional. Her flippancy about human tragedy seems immature and insensitive.

Also the book contains many typos and word choice errors (i.e., site instead of sight, shuttered instead of shuddered) which makes me wonder if the publisher employs any proofreaders at all. Overall, the book seems sloppy and rushed. But she gives plenty of disgusting details about death scenes.

I hate to disagree with the majority view but, for me, the author came across as arrogant and self-important. She seemed far more interested in grinding her own axe than telling you anything useful or unbiased about forensic work. I found the book irritating and humourless and all I came away with was the size of the chip on the author's shoulder.

I'm only going to finish this book because I'm trying to complete a 100-books-in-2011 goal and I need this one to count. I'm very put off by the narrator's attitude. I've read many books by forensic professionals on similar subjects and none of them made me want to reach through the page and strangle the narrator. The author comes off as disdainful of anybody who isn't her, contemptuous of people who have any kind of failing, and unfailingly disgusted by everything. By the time I was halfway through the book I thought I might scream if she used the word "gross" one more time. She writes all her anecdotes as if she's composing a script for a sitcom starring herself as the cleverest, snarkiest character and giving herself all the "best" lines. I put "best" in quotes because the so-called clever witticisms aren't even funny.

This book is also in dire need of a good editor. Repeatedly the word "hoards" is used when "hordes" is intended, and other similar errors.

If you want to read a GOOD book about forensic science, try William Maples' "Dead Men Do Tell Tales." He writes about interesting case studies - not just random happenings on the job - and manages not to denigrate the people he encounters and those whose remains he studies.

Kollman did an OUTSTANDING job telling the tale of the crime scene investigator. It isn't CSI: Miami, and those who think the TV show even remotely resembles real-life CSI work need to pick up this book and read it. Unlike the CSI TV series, there is more gore than glamour to the job, and you can bet that Kollman was never found walking around in a death scene wearing heels and a business suit.

For those who are not experienced in crime scene investigation, as long as you can tolerate very graphic descriptions of dead bodies and such, then this will be a good book to start with to get an understanding of what is involved in the world of forensics.

For those of us who have done crime scene investigation, there are several sections where you will find yourself laughing, nodding your head with the familiarity of what she is describing, and you may experience a little deja vu!

Either way, this book is a winner.

Without a doubt, Dana Kollmann's book is the frontrunner for the Most Evocative Book Title of 2007. If seeing "Never Suck A Dead Man's Hand" above a colorful lollypop crawling with flies doesn't get you to pick up the book, then nothing in life holds any curiosity for you.

If you put it down after that, however, I'll understand. Kollmann draws from her 10-year stint investigating crime scenes in Baltimore County, Maryland, some of the most disgusting stories I've ever come across. They make the toilet scene in "Trainspotting" look like a visit to Mr. Rogers neighborhood.

As she makes clear from the first page, this isn't "CSI," "Bones," "Without a Trace" or any of those other corpse-of-the-week shows that marries gee-whiz technology with "ripped from the headlines" stories. The work that Kollmann others like her do is like taking field trips to Hell, where you walk into the darkness, far beyond the light of hope. Death is in the air you breathe. You feel it in your skin.

In addition to those benefits, the job comes with mandatory overtime, and work on nights, weekends and holidays. You get to collect evidence in the rain and snow and indoors where the bodies are ripe beyond the aid of Vicks and high-powered fans.

Kollmann combines these gruesome stories with insights into her upbringing -- she was a dedicated bonehunter and wanted to be an archaeologist -- and depictions of her family. There's her Sicilian mother with her roster of superstitions brought over from the old country, her ex-cop father whose "been there, done that" attitude spares him from going on invited ridealongs, and her brother, whose day spent on the job was the one where she encountered the suicide under the fan.

For those who want to watch the process from a safe and scent-free distance, Kollmann's memoir is a fast-moving tour through the forensic world that you won't see on television. That Kollmann and others like her are willing to do this necessary but sometimes nasty job deserves commendation. The taxpayers certainly aren't paying them enough.

If you are at all squeamish about, well virtually anything, this book might not be for you. Then again, perhaps for that very reason you should read it. Most of us go about comfortable lives unaware of gruesome details associated with certain jobs necessary in our society. Television shows like the various incarnations of CSI have moderately raised public awareness of this particular field.

Dana Kollmann's book strips away the glitz and glamour of Hollywood's version of the work they perform. Her vivid recollections help readers comprehend assaults on the senses (particularly smell) this line of employment endures. Narratives are filled with easily understood explanations of processes and sprinkled liberally with her humorous outlook on life. Some might find offense in the occasional cavalier attitude yet it becomes abundantly clear this defense mechanism is necessary to preserve sanity in this line of work.

Never Suck a Dead Man's Hand is highly entertaining and extremely informative. It should be required reading for starry eyed CSI wannabes. I now have a deeper appreciation for their skills, dedication and willingness to endure unspeakable circumstances in order to assess situational truths we as a society require.

This woman is quite adorable. I found myself surprised at how, even though I picked the book up because I like crime nonfiction, I found it wasn't really a story about crime work at all. Some of the stories were very amusing but the deeper understanding I carried away was what a funny life it is. I greatly enjoyed the story of her parent's reaction to her crime stories and them not wanting to visit her work. I enjoyed the stories about her getting quite a rude introduction to being a crime worker who isn't a police officer and I loved the story of her sneaking home to take care of her dogs and accidentally pressing the panic button that allowed the whole department to hear her dog cooing. If you are looking for a hardcore crime solving book then this might be a little soft for you. If you're looking for a story of how ridiculous the actuality of crime is through the eyes of a quirky young mom then this is probably right up your alley.

This is a memoir type nonfiction book by Dana Kollman; a current graduate and undergraduate professor at Towson University and a former CSI. It is told in a flashback style, and jumps around from different points in her career. Her experience with crime scenes and her knowledge of the field shine on every page. It is intentionally hilarious-from the chapter "A sucker is born every minute(where the title story comes from); "Grave Matters (reading the part in the chapter about how she deals with uncovering a forgotten grave site is worth the price of the book alone) to " All good things must come to an end," which is , WELL, about number 2 funnies that happen to CSI's. It is a short and fun summer read for the upcoming hot months. It is not for the faint of heart, as Ms. Kollman has no difficulties in giving the straight stories of what the smells, sights, and tastes (yes, that too, see the first chapter I wrote about) of dead people.