What do you think?
Rate this book
How to Solve a Cold Case: And Everything Else You Wanted To Know About Catching Killers
Shortlisted for The Brass Knuckles Award for Best Nonfiction Crime Book, Crime Writers of Canada Awards
Get inside the mind of an elite cold case investigator and learn how to solve a murder. Despite advances in DNA evidence and forensic analysis, almost half of murder cases in Canada and the US remain unsolved. By 2016, the solved rate had dropped so significantly in the United States that it was the lowest in recorded history, with one in two killers never even identified, much less arrested and successfully prosecuted. And the statistics are just as bad in Canada. As a sought-after global expert and former detective, Arntfield has devoted his career to helping solve cold cases and serial murders, including the creation of the Western University Cold Case Society, which pairs students with police detectives to help solve crimes. In How to Solve a Cold Case , Arntfield outlines the history of cold case squads in Canada and the US, and lays out the steps to understanding and solving crime. Arntfield shows you what to look for, how to avoid common mistakes, recognize patterns and discover what others have missed. Weaving in case studies of cold crimes from across Canada and the US, as well as a chapter on how armchair detectives can get involved, How to Solve a Cold Case is a must-read for mystery fans and true crime buffs everywhere.
Get inside the mind of an elite cold case investigator and learn how to solve a murder. Despite advances in DNA evidence and forensic analysis, almost half of murder cases in Canada and the US remain unsolved. By 2016, the solved rate had dropped so significantly in the United States that it was the lowest in recorded history, with one in two killers never even identified, much less arrested and successfully prosecuted. And the statistics are just as bad in Canada. As a sought-after global expert and former detective, Arntfield has devoted his career to helping solve cold cases and serial murders, including the creation of the Western University Cold Case Society, which pairs students with police detectives to help solve crimes. In How to Solve a Cold Case , Arntfield outlines the history of cold case squads in Canada and the US, and lays out the steps to understanding and solving crime. Arntfield shows you what to look for, how to avoid common mistakes, recognize patterns and discover what others have missed. Weaving in case studies of cold crimes from across Canada and the US, as well as a chapter on how armchair detectives can get involved, How to Solve a Cold Case is a must-read for mystery fans and true crime buffs everywhere.
352 pages, Paperback
Published April 19, 2022
37 people are currently reading
342 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
Currently reading
May 2, 2022What is interesting about this book is that there are many unsolved murder cases in the US, and many, many more serial killers. When the murders are plotted on a map, and coloured (perhaps) according to the modus operandi of death/evidence, it becomes apparent that even though the murders may have been separated by years and even geography, but that they have been committed by the same people. But because of funding, different protocols on when a case is a cold case, non-communication between police forces etc. it looks like there are many more killers than there probably are.
I don't agree with all the author has to say, especially about almost all killers having absent fathers and abusive mothers, and that murder is very often associated with paraphilias (weird sexual fetishes, like necrophilia, paedophilia etc which are also cultural and start in childhoold). He says that most serial killers are male and that the minds of men and women are different and men are more visual than women, well yeah I would agree with all of that. But it made me wonder if crimes of a sexual or violent nature and of murder would be the same as the biological sex of a transexual person, or if they would be of the sex they identify with.
It is no good saying that men and women's brains are the same, it's just we are acculturated differently in one breath, and in the next breath someone saying they self-identify as the opposite gender and have always thought that they were that gender. I don't have any issues with how people self-identify (unless their rights are put above others, like with sport where biology definitely matters, or in a few other instances). In general we deal with people as people, a bank teller, a barista, a lawyer, what difference does it make to anyone except the person what gender or sexuality they identify with.
But I think it would be interesting to see with criminal transexuals if their crimes and modus operandi are those of their biological or self-identified gender? Maybe it would help clear up the our brains are different/no they are not debate?
I'm enjoying (some of) the book.
I don't agree with all the author has to say, especially about almost all killers having absent fathers and abusive mothers, and that murder is very often associated with paraphilias (weird sexual fetishes, like necrophilia, paedophilia etc which are also cultural and start in childhoold). He says that most serial killers are male and that the minds of men and women are different and men are more visual than women, well yeah I would agree with all of that. But it made me wonder if crimes of a sexual or violent nature and of murder would be the same as the biological sex of a transexual person, or if they would be of the sex they identify with.
It is no good saying that men and women's brains are the same, it's just we are acculturated differently in one breath, and in the next breath someone saying they self-identify as the opposite gender and have always thought that they were that gender. I don't have any issues with how people self-identify (unless their rights are put above others, like with sport where biology definitely matters, or in a few other instances). In general we deal with people as people, a bank teller, a barista, a lawyer, what difference does it make to anyone except the person what gender or sexuality they identify with.
But I think it would be interesting to see with criminal transexuals if their crimes and modus operandi are those of their biological or self-identified gender? Maybe it would help clear up the our brains are different/no they are not debate?
I'm enjoying (some of) the book.
June 19, 2022
2022 Free Range Reading
A book chosen for education, not part of any project, plan, or list. I heard the author interviewed about this book on CBC radio and couldn't resist requesting it from the library. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the writing, but have researched enough to know that the author teaches a university course entitled Literary Criminology and the Fiction of Detection. I hate to admit how much I would love to take that course!
I was disturbed by the author's linkage of several of paraphilias common to killers to a gravitation to the outdoors in general and to forests in particular. Forested areas are camouflage from which to observe and stalk potential victims, while having an easy excuse for being there, namely taking a walk. Having just recently heard about an unsuccessful attack on a woman in a park just a few minutes north of me, this information made my blood run cold! Hearing about that attack pretty much ended my intentions to go out birding by myself, but this cinches it. No more venturing out alone. Even before reading this, I had determined that being alone in more remote locations is asking for trouble.
One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was in the last third, where the author discusses literary criminology, the history of writing “true crime," from Charles Dickens (he had a regular column about shadowing a law enforcement friend) to the present day. He offers examples of investigative techniques invented by authors which came to be used by law enforcement (eg. Handwriting analysis). He also includes all those TV shows and podcasts (and gives the reader an objective rating of many of them).
Statistics seem to suggest that many middle-class middle-aged women are the consumers of this genre. Here I must put up my hand and admit that I am guilty as charged. In fact I cancelled my cable TV because I watched too much of this stuff and was making myself excessively paranoid. ”Real violence in the real world produces stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, while watching or simulating violence produces pleasure chemicals. It's a fascinating dichotomy.” This is the first convincing explanation that I have heard for the popularity of this genre. (It also gives me insight into my undying love for violent urban fantasy fiction).
Reading this book made me itchy to be able to DO something about the issue of unsolved murders. Perhaps just realizing that I can take better care of myself out in the world will have to do the trick. Mentioned in the text was Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence, which I have benefited from. I recommend it to all women and any men who have women in their lives. That book was instrumental in my life years ago when I was dealing with several creepy men who lurked on the edges of my life, and de Becker's advice kept me unscathed.
A book chosen for education, not part of any project, plan, or list. I heard the author interviewed about this book on CBC radio and couldn't resist requesting it from the library. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the writing, but have researched enough to know that the author teaches a university course entitled Literary Criminology and the Fiction of Detection. I hate to admit how much I would love to take that course!
I was disturbed by the author's linkage of several of paraphilias common to killers to a gravitation to the outdoors in general and to forests in particular. Forested areas are camouflage from which to observe and stalk potential victims, while having an easy excuse for being there, namely taking a walk. Having just recently heard about an unsuccessful attack on a woman in a park just a few minutes north of me, this information made my blood run cold! Hearing about that attack pretty much ended my intentions to go out birding by myself, but this cinches it. No more venturing out alone. Even before reading this, I had determined that being alone in more remote locations is asking for trouble.
One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was in the last third, where the author discusses literary criminology, the history of writing “true crime," from Charles Dickens (he had a regular column about shadowing a law enforcement friend) to the present day. He offers examples of investigative techniques invented by authors which came to be used by law enforcement (eg. Handwriting analysis). He also includes all those TV shows and podcasts (and gives the reader an objective rating of many of them).
Statistics seem to suggest that many middle-class middle-aged women are the consumers of this genre. Here I must put up my hand and admit that I am guilty as charged. In fact I cancelled my cable TV because I watched too much of this stuff and was making myself excessively paranoid. ”Real violence in the real world produces stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, while watching or simulating violence produces pleasure chemicals. It's a fascinating dichotomy.” This is the first convincing explanation that I have heard for the popularity of this genre. (It also gives me insight into my undying love for violent urban fantasy fiction).
Reading this book made me itchy to be able to DO something about the issue of unsolved murders. Perhaps just realizing that I can take better care of myself out in the world will have to do the trick. Mentioned in the text was Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence, which I have benefited from. I recommend it to all women and any men who have women in their lives. That book was instrumental in my life years ago when I was dealing with several creepy men who lurked on the edges of my life, and de Becker's advice kept me unscathed.
May 13, 2022
This book is compelling to read. The author is clearly very experienced in the field and has a lot of passionate things to say about cold cases and crime solving as a system. There are a lot of fascinating case examples from across North America that he uses to illustrate how a case can go from unsolved to solved (or 'cleared' as he would emphasize).
There are two ways this book left me disappointed by the end:
One, each chapter reviews so many different examples of cases that the lingering impression is of the murder cases themselves, rather than the methods used to solve them. It lacks the sort of start-to-finish view of how cases get solved. There is a lot more emphasis on the systemic challenges involved (which are real and valid to draw attention to), but given the title of the book I'm surprised there wasn't more emphasis on the actual cold case methods.
Two, he lost me on the last chapter on true crime. He pulls a few high profile, heavily flawed examples from the genre, to criticize the genre as a whole. There are a lot of pointed omissions in the true crime field that he doesn't get into (namely, the large number of popular podcasts that are part of this genre), perhaps because he hasn't listened to them or because he would risk alienating his own readership by picking them apart. True crime is a wide genre. But this chapter comes off more like a personal rant than anything else, and that's a disappointing way to end.
There are two ways this book left me disappointed by the end:
One, each chapter reviews so many different examples of cases that the lingering impression is of the murder cases themselves, rather than the methods used to solve them. It lacks the sort of start-to-finish view of how cases get solved. There is a lot more emphasis on the systemic challenges involved (which are real and valid to draw attention to), but given the title of the book I'm surprised there wasn't more emphasis on the actual cold case methods.
Two, he lost me on the last chapter on true crime. He pulls a few high profile, heavily flawed examples from the genre, to criticize the genre as a whole. There are a lot of pointed omissions in the true crime field that he doesn't get into (namely, the large number of popular podcasts that are part of this genre), perhaps because he hasn't listened to them or because he would risk alienating his own readership by picking them apart. True crime is a wide genre. But this chapter comes off more like a personal rant than anything else, and that's a disappointing way to end.
May 30, 2022
A fascinating read from the perspective of a police officer who became a criminologist with a PH.D. Saw this in my local bookstore, borrowed it from the library. Educational and informative.
August 9, 2022
Did not finish. I got really tired of the writing style and all the unsubstantiated judgements in a book marketed as informational not opinion.
October 17, 2024
I learnt about some interesting cold cases in this book, and the author is certainly qualified to write on the topic, but I did find it quite biased at points, and not always accurate. Some examples:
- "But it wasn't gambling that drove Paddock to massacre innocents. Nor was it mental illness- his brain, sent to the medical school at Stanford University for analysis showed no abnormalities." As far as I'm aware, mental illness very rarely is due to a biological or structural abnormality in the brain, so this seemed like an odd statement.
- Arntfield says that true crime makes us overly paranoid, but spend the first part of the book telling us how much more common murder is than we think and that city stats are lying to us. So this seemed contradictory.
-On the topic of true crime, Arntfield denigrates the genre, obviously thinking that his true crime writing is far more literary and accurate. He's right, in certain cases, but the whole things comes across as very holier-than-thou.
-Arntfield says that he will meaningfully talk about Black Lives Matter and protests against the police, but he never really does, although he does thoughtfully discuss the marginalization of POC homicide victims. He has many examples of police behaving badly or incompetently, but then at the end says the public's lack of trust of the police is a problem that leads to lower crime solving rates. This whole topic was handled confusingly.
-He puts in biased statements that are occasionally hilarious, such as "Municipal politics, especially mayoralty runs, for some reason often seem to attract disordered and sometimes dangerous personalities", and sometimes are too left-field. He states at one point that Steven Avery would have committed the rape of Penny Beernsten if he'd had the chance, a perspective that makes sense considering his belief of Avery's guilt, but nonetheless a bit of an overconfident take.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, and Arntfield is clearly knowledgeable, but he did come across as arrogant and superior quite often, and I think the text could have benefitted from more editing and a more neutral tone.
- "But it wasn't gambling that drove Paddock to massacre innocents. Nor was it mental illness- his brain, sent to the medical school at Stanford University for analysis showed no abnormalities." As far as I'm aware, mental illness very rarely is due to a biological or structural abnormality in the brain, so this seemed like an odd statement.
- Arntfield says that true crime makes us overly paranoid, but spend the first part of the book telling us how much more common murder is than we think and that city stats are lying to us. So this seemed contradictory.
-On the topic of true crime, Arntfield denigrates the genre, obviously thinking that his true crime writing is far more literary and accurate. He's right, in certain cases, but the whole things comes across as very holier-than-thou.
-Arntfield says that he will meaningfully talk about Black Lives Matter and protests against the police, but he never really does, although he does thoughtfully discuss the marginalization of POC homicide victims. He has many examples of police behaving badly or incompetently, but then at the end says the public's lack of trust of the police is a problem that leads to lower crime solving rates. This whole topic was handled confusingly.
-He puts in biased statements that are occasionally hilarious, such as "Municipal politics, especially mayoralty runs, for some reason often seem to attract disordered and sometimes dangerous personalities", and sometimes are too left-field. He states at one point that Steven Avery would have committed the rape of Penny Beernsten if he'd had the chance, a perspective that makes sense considering his belief of Avery's guilt, but nonetheless a bit of an overconfident take.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, and Arntfield is clearly knowledgeable, but he did come across as arrogant and superior quite often, and I think the text could have benefitted from more editing and a more neutral tone.
March 3, 2023
Great title, though completely misleading. The book has nothing to do with the hows of solving a cold case. Furthermore it does not, for me at least, make for interesting or entertaining reading.
Instead the book presents a tedious rant on the history and abysmal state of policing and investigation over the decades. Great if you are into that kind of thing, but whom might the handful of readers that fall into that category actually be? I for one was wholly duped by the lure of the compelling title.
I am not 100% correct when I say the book has nothing to do with solving a case, there is in fact one reference put forward on the last page book or two of the book addressing how to actually solve a cold case. Upload your DNA to the public DNA database.
Instead the book presents a tedious rant on the history and abysmal state of policing and investigation over the decades. Great if you are into that kind of thing, but whom might the handful of readers that fall into that category actually be? I for one was wholly duped by the lure of the compelling title.
I am not 100% correct when I say the book has nothing to do with solving a case, there is in fact one reference put forward on the last page book or two of the book addressing how to actually solve a cold case. Upload your DNA to the public DNA database.
February 27, 2025
Easy read that gives insider information on cold cases. Reads a little judgy and very pop-culture focused rather than academic, but definitely interesting and now I know a lot more about paraphilias.
January 24, 2023
Read it in one sitting!
April 10, 2023
Informative and interesting but not super engaging. For a true crime finatic they might be more into it but if you're reading for the fun of it you may lose interest
April 18, 2023
While I enjoyed the book, it will probably leave me a little less likely form relationships with strangers without asking for a detailed background and fact check.
July 22, 2023
I couldn't get enough of this book. The subject matter was really interesting and I loved that the author focused on Canadian cases as well as American and International.
November 11, 2023
I'm not as into this genre as some people. This wasn't bad but at times Arntfield wrote with what felt like overly confident assumptions that it made it hard to take them all seriously.
July 24, 2024
actually a dnf, it was going fairly well but when he started talking about dungeons and dragons he got it so wrong i began doubting everything else...not that it was a bad book, but i stopped enjoying it after that lol
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews