“Never Suck a Dead Man’s Hand: Curious Adventures of a CSI” Dana Kollmann – partial real

This was a 2008 purchase from Powell’s in Portland, Oregon. I had enjoyed several other books on criminal investigations and pathology, and the title made this sound interesting. However, this didn't have the same qualities of, say, books by Mary Roach, and so I didn’t make it very far through it before I had to stop.

Let’s start with the good bits: Kollmann tells about the job as a job – not glitzy, not Hollywood. People don’t die at convenient times and, unlike the TV shows CSI and NCIS, there are going to be times when the crime scene has to be processed in rain, snow, sleet and dark of night. Information at the crime scene is often difficult to collect, and yes we find out why one might want to suck on a dead man’s hand.  I'm glad she didn't glitz it up.  I find too many students interested in forensics, and they end up going for our biochemistry/forensics major, but for all the wrong reasons.

Kollmann’s humor is dry like it’s been toweled down and blown with a hair dryer. She is a scientist and makes jokes like a scientist. I appreciated the humor, but I didn't feel compelled to laugh out loud.

The bad bits: Maybe I'm pampered, but while the stories Kollmann has to tell are interesting, I wouldn’t call her a good storyteller. I didn’t even know where the story was going in Chapter 2. This book has a quality that I heard a student express once about “The Known World” in an on-line lecture series I watched. The student said that there was no suspense meaning that, if he put the book down, there was nothing particular to draw him back to the book. He didn’t know what the questions were that finishing the chapter or the book would answer for him. I would say the same for “Never Suck.” I know there will be more anecdotes about a CSI’s job told from a science point of view, but I already know why not to suck on a dead man’s hand after 80 pages, so why continue?

I can’t decide whether to put this in the pile of books to donate or on the unread-books bookshelf. Is there a time in the future I might want to try this again? Maybe, so I’ll hedge my bets and keep it for now.