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Murder Trails: The Art and Science of Detection
Murder Trail tells the fascinating stories of eleven high-profile murder or multiple murder cases through the eyes of the men who accepted the challenges of solving them. In each case the detective must reach deep inside the brilliant but warped minds of the criminals. Drawing on the words of our real-life detectives, their families and colleagues, and where possible, the murderer himself, as well as on archive material—news footage, surveillance recordings, interrogations, and trial transcripts— Murder Trail provides a wholly revealing insight into the mind of the murderer. However, the focus is always on the detective, and in this book we look at the pressures on him from the media, his bosses, politicians, and victims' families.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2002
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February 12, 2023
The prose is easy to read, and the author has undertaken some fresh research, interviewing police officers involved with the featured crimes. But it feels terribly dated. There is little, if any, effort to tell us about the victims, and the insert plates show us only the killers and the cops who sought them.
The author is almost reverential to the police. He does acknowledge certain catastrophic failings, but he dismisses most and explains away others - despite them creating the conditions for the perpetrators to continue killing. And he reports on the police forces' dehumanising attitudes and behaviours without critique, sometimes echoing them himself. He describes one victim as "a nobody. A street whore in Los Angeles, of Afro-American descent" (p45). He may be trying to explain why the police made little effort to investigate her death, but he doesn't say so, and he doesn't critique that stance. It made my skin creep.
There is one section where Bell does comment on police attitudes, but it's such a weak examination that it might be better if he hadn't: "plenty of investigators can adopt a fairly laid-back attitude when the victim seems of low status, a whore, a drug-dealer or gang member; what the cynical cops mark in their notebooks as 'NHI' - No Humans Involved" (p139). Sorry? These cops aren't "cynical". They shame the profession.
Perhaps with some revisions, this book could have provided neat summaries of major crime cases. But alas, it perpetuates such appallingly dehumanising attitudes that I think I'll have to bin it rather than donate it to a charity shop.
The author is almost reverential to the police. He does acknowledge certain catastrophic failings, but he dismisses most and explains away others - despite them creating the conditions for the perpetrators to continue killing. And he reports on the police forces' dehumanising attitudes and behaviours without critique, sometimes echoing them himself. He describes one victim as "a nobody. A street whore in Los Angeles, of Afro-American descent" (p45). He may be trying to explain why the police made little effort to investigate her death, but he doesn't say so, and he doesn't critique that stance. It made my skin creep.
There is one section where Bell does comment on police attitudes, but it's such a weak examination that it might be better if he hadn't: "plenty of investigators can adopt a fairly laid-back attitude when the victim seems of low status, a whore, a drug-dealer or gang member; what the cynical cops mark in their notebooks as 'NHI' - No Humans Involved" (p139). Sorry? These cops aren't "cynical". They shame the profession.
Perhaps with some revisions, this book could have provided neat summaries of major crime cases. But alas, it perpetuates such appallingly dehumanising attitudes that I think I'll have to bin it rather than donate it to a charity shop.
Displaying 1 of 1 review