Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

Great book, but a bit outdated	Customer Rating:
This book was printed in 1992. It's definitely a great book for its time, as it's pretty detailed with crime scene investigation techniques. I just wish it had been updated since then.

Full of information, and fun to read!	Customer Rating:
Lots of good, basic information about how the police handle crime scenes. I learned a lot, and it was also a pleasure to read. I read it in one afternoon. Even if you have an amateur sleuth, this will help you a lot.

a great help!	Customer Rating:
i cannot express enough my appreciation of Dr. Wingate for making this material available to other crime writers. the information in this book has helped me tremendously, and i would gladly reccommend it to others! i cannot wait to recieve other 'howdunit' books; as i continue to write. please keep the information coming, Dr. Wingate! mary speranza (author, POOKIE)

a useful source

Customer Rating:

I found this book to be both interesting and informative and also very useful in writing a crime story. It will definitely give you an idea of how the cops in your story should act at a crime scene and what they should and shouldn't do. The book is also helpful even if your main character isn't a cop at all. I do have a couple of complaints about the book though. For one thing, the author gives way too much detail on some things. Like the fingerprints. The chapters on fingerprints seemed to be aimed more at someone who wants to become a fingerprint expert instead of just writing fiction about them. I found parts of the fingerprint chapters to be extremely boring and I even skipped through a small portion of it. Although some amount of detail can add realism to a story, I really cannot understand why anyone would want to put THAT much detail on fingerprints into a work of fiction. Secondly, the author slips into stories of personal experience several times in the novel. Most of the stories are interesting and could help a writer, but a couple of them just seem to be rambling by the author and really have nothing to add that would help anyone in writing a novel. But despite these complaints, I still found the book to be very useful and, for the most part, very interesting. I would definitely recommend it.

Scene of the Crime: The Howdunit Series	Customer Rating:
A great source of information on the field of Crime Scene Investigation. This books gives a great comprehensive overview of the field and how it may work from small towns to larger cities. A great source to find out if it may be something you would like to get into as a career.