Suggested Reading List
Crime Scene Evidence Photographer’s Guide, 2nd ed.
Author: Steven Staggs
Description: The Crime Scene and Evidence Photographer's Guide, 2nd Edition is designed to be a field reference for those responsible for photography at the crime scene. It may be used by law enforcement officers, investigators, and crime scene technicians. It contains instructions for photographing a variety of crimes scenes and various types of evidence. It is a valuable reference tool when combined with training and experience. The Crime Scene and Evidence Photographer's Guide is also a helpful resource for students and others interested in entering into the field of crime scene investigation.
Beat
Author: Stephen Jay Schwartz
Description: From Booklist:
Writers of detective fiction, perhaps to counterbalance their protagonists’ superhuman talents, frequently afflict them with an addiction, usually alcohol, or in the case of Sherlock Holmes, cocaine. Schwartz’s Hayden Glass, LAPD homicide detective, likewise shows an all-too-human weakness, but he is a sex addict. In Beat, the department puts him on administrative leave in order to get straight, but he falls for a cyber sex worker named Cora. She is based in far-off San Francisco, and soon Glass is making weekly trips north; then Cora goes missing. Glass sets out to find her and learns she is a pawn in a deadly game of corruption. Her Russian crime lords want to keep her in tow because she gives them a hold on a crooked police administrator. The cops try to wave Glass off by showing him emails in which she ridicules him roundly. Sick at heart and ready to give up, Glass learns Cora is only 15, and he is back in the fray. Beat is an old-fashioned nail-biter that the not-too-squeamish aficionado of the hard-boiled genre will enjoy.
~ Steve Glassman
For more information about Stephen, visit his website at www.stephenjayschwartz.com
Boulevard
Author: Stephen Jay Schwartz
Description: From Publishers Weekly:
Like James Ellroy, Hollywood film developer Schwartz can make the reader squirm, as shown in his debut, a disturbing thriller whose hero is addicted to sex. When several sex murders quickly follow the murder of a prominent councilman's niece, LAPD robbery and homicide detective Hayden Glass, who himself goes to 12-step meetings for sex addicts, senses a connection. Enlisting the help of Kennedy Reynard, an ex-FBI profiler whose skill competes with her raw sexuality for the detective's attention, the pair realize that what links the murders is Glass himself. Despite a denouement that's a tad strained, Schwartz does a fine job of blurring the lines between sexuality and violence, the criminal world and the police world.
Copyright © Reed Business Information
Assume Nothing
Author: Gar Anthony Haywood
Description: In this brutal stand-alone from Haywood (Cemetery Road), former Florida cop Joe Reddick relocates to Los Angeles following the trauma of discovering his wife and two children slaughtered in their home. Nine years later, a minor car accident involving a careless driver with something to hide, Andy Baumhower, precipitates a similar threat to Reddick's new wife and son, Dana and Jake. Reddick, determined to eliminate the threat by whatever means necessary, goes after Baumhower and his three business partners, who are trying to cover both a kidnapping gone bad and a $250,000 debt to sadistic Mexican drug boss Ruben Lizama. The action takes plenty of suspenseful twists toward the showdown. This is as dark as Haywood's Aaron Gunner series, but the tortured Reddick is a much less likable character.
~ Publishers Weekly
Cemetery Road
Author: Gar Anthony Haywood
Description: From Booklist:
This gripping stand-alone thriller marks the long-awaited return of Gar Anthony Haywood, author of the critically acclaimed Aaron Gunner series. Errol “Handy” White is working as a handyman in the Twin Cities when he gets word that his old friend, R. J. Burrows, has been murdered in Los Angeles. Handy knows he must return to L.A. to attend the funeral, but he also knows that when he sets foot in L.A., where he, R. J., and another friend, O’Neal Holden (now a rising politician), grew up together, a terrible secret is in danger of coming to light. Haywood melds an intricately plotted but highly suspenseful thriller to a moving story of belated coming-of-age, as the introspective, deeply troubled Handy forces himself to confront what has gone wrong with his life. As in the Gunner series, Haywood exhibits a remarkable eye for detail, both in describing the landscape of poverty (“the bathroom had a toilet that only flushed when it was willing”) and in exposing the nuances of character. It has been too long between books for a writer who has always belonged in the upper echelon of American crime fiction. ~ Bill Ott
The Stratford Conspiracy: An Amelia Watson Mystery
Author: Michael Mallory
Description: The Second Mrs. Watson is back on the case! This time the intrepid Amelia Watson finds herself in Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare, seeking to help the sister of a lifelong friend with a family crisis. Before long, she, her trouble-prone chum Harry Benbow, and new acquaintance—a neophyte Canadian detective—all become enmeshed in a web of intrigue centering on shocking evidence proclaiming that Queen Elizabeth I was William Shakespeare! The adventure begins with the murder of an American Shakespearean scholar in London, and travels all the way to William Shakespeare’s grave in an ancient church on the banks of the gently-flowing Avon. In the process, Amelia is forced to admit that she may finally have taken on a case that is too puzzling—and too deadly—for her to solve; and worse, that she may become the next victim of the ruthless murderer that is stalking Stratford.
The Mural: A Novel of Horror
Author: Michael Mallory
Description: Hidden in the desolate woods on the Central California coast, lost to time and memory, is a WPA mural unlike any other created during the 1930s. This one was not simply fashioned from charcoal and paint; it was crafted out of undying evil--the evil of an ancient demonic army called Legion. When structural inspector Jack Hayden stumbles upon the mural in a ruined civic building, he tries to convince himself that it might add to the crumbling structure’s value. But that note of hopefulness is quickly replaced by terror as the mural spreads its cruel, nightmarish horror over Hayden and everyone in his life. Soon he's leading his own attack force made up of those who have managed to fend off the evil of the mural in their souls, but now must do so in physical terms...or die trying. The fictional debut of a new master of horror fiction!
Kind of Blue
Author: Miles Corwin
Description: From Publishers Weekly:
Former L.A. Times crime reporter Corwin (Homicide Special: A Year with the LAPD's Elite Detective Unit) introduces an engaging Jewish police detective in his first novel, a grittily realistic story of murder, stupidity, and redemption. Ash Levine, the LAPD's top detective, resigns after his suspension for failing to prevent the death of a key witness he was supposed to protect. A year later, Ash's former boss invites him to lead the investigation into an ex-cop's murder. Levine returns to the force, hoping to reopen the case that cost him his job, though not everyone in the department is thrilled to see him back. A jazz lover (hence the Miles Davis–inspired title), the son of a concentration camp survivor, and a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces, Ash battles through departmental interference, corruption, and misdirection. Given his strong debut, Ash should be back on the job for further assignments.
Copyright © Reed Business Information
Homicide Special
Author: Miles Corwin
Description: With an Updated Epilogue by the Author
"A compelling portrait of seasoned homicide cops at work. This is L.A.'s darkest side: ironic, heart-breaking, stunningly violent, unfailingly human. Riveting."
-Jonathan Kellerman
The mandate for Los Angeles' unique police unit Homicide Special is to take on the toughest, most controversial, and highest-profile cases. In this "literate, unfailingly interesting work of true crime" (Kirkus Reviews), acclaimed writer Miles Corwin uses unprecedented access to narrate six of the unit's cases-and capture its newest generation at work. When a call girl from Kiev dies in the line of duty, detectives Chuck Knolls and Brian McCartin seek her killer among a circle of Russian women who have been sold into white slavery. When a gangster's daughter takes a bullet, veterans Jerry Stephens and Paul Coulter trace clues scattered across the country to a Manhattan real-estate magnate. A cold case is reopened; a mother-daughter drowning and a baffling rape/murder are solved. And, finally, Corwin re-creates the investigation surrounding the late Bonny Lee Blakley, allegedly murdered by her actor-husband, Robert Blake.
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