Received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievment award) in 2006.
He has also published under the name Patrick Culhane. He and his wife, Barbara Collins, have written several books together. Some of them are published under the name Barbara Allan.
Book Awards Shamus Awards Best Novel winner (1984) : True Detective Shamus Awards Best Novel winner (1992) : Stolen Away Shamus Awards Best Novel nominee (1995) : Carnal Hours Shamus Awards Best Novel nominee (1997) : Damned in Paradise Shamus Awards Best Novel nominee (1999) : Flying Blind: A Novel about Amelia Earhart Shamus Awards Best Novel nominee (2002) : Angel in Black
I really adored this book, the writing style and everything else about it.
The stories are well written and each character is different and I love that you can see that very clearly. These books can all be read as stand alone stories and they read away quite easily.
As a law student stores like these intrigue me a lot and I am definitely planning on reading more CSI stories!
They're not too scary so for someone who might not like scary things but does want to go out of their comfort zone a little bit, the CSI books might be a good start!
CSI: Mortal Wounds was a great three book series. It held true to the CSI TV show. The author captured the characters and their personalities perfectly. It was a fun filled series that kept me guessing in each episode. LOVED IT!
I read and reviewed each of the three novels collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. They were all three star reads for me; I liked the focus on science. I can't say that I've ever had a yearning for a career in forensics myself - as a scientist, I have occasional daydreams about being a different sort of scientist (an archaeologist, maybe, or an astronomer) - but when it comes to dead bodies, I prefer to read about other people dealing with them. It's entertaining because I don't have to do it.
I read the book because I'm a fan of the tv series and I've been rewatching it lately. I can't say that I've ever considered Grissom's smile to be "angelic" before, however - Collins clearly thinks it is, though, because that descriptor gets used a lot. And now I'm paranoid about repeated descriptions in my own work...
This book contains three separate stories following the CSI team from the hit TV show. Each story contains unique cases that are all very much different from the next and bring back the original characters from the series (this is an older book after all). The stories are simple and straightforward though I do recommend that you do not leave that long a gap between each reading because I forgot what was going on in some cases and that can lessen the impact of the story. This set of books goes back to the original essence of the CSI show - the science and the fact that the 'evidence does not lie'. I feel like the newer episodes of this show have changed dramatically but these stories brought back what I loved about the first few series. There isn't too much action that you may come to expect in a crime book but instead this follows clues and the science in a much more systematic approach, quite often working out the culprit mere pages before the end of the story. I thoroughly enjoyed the nostalgia of the stories and the characters and really reminded me how great Grissom was - I miss this character!
If you like the TV show, chances are you'll like this too. It seemed like there was a bit more story to these investigations than the scientific type speak/actions that you see on the show. While some of the CSI type shows can get very predictable, I found that I had a harder time picking out the killer in the books. Although that might just mean I'm out of practice reading mysteries. :) I really liked that there were three novels in this edition because once I read the first one, I had an urge to read another. After three, I think my mystery craving has been fulfilled for a bit.