“The Skeleton Crew” by Deborah Halber - A Macabre Blessing

As advanced and progressive as modern investigative techniques may be, the fact of the matter remains that every year countless deaths go unsolved, and what's more, countless victims remain unidentified.

Indeed, in the United States somewhere around forty thousand people die every year, leaving nothing but a mystery, their identities being completely unknown.

There are countless ways to end up biting the dust without leaving any means of being identified behind, ranging from a careless adventure in the woods with no ID to falling victim to natural disasters or even serial killers. The number of cases just keeps on piling up, but as is explored in The Skeleton Crew by Deborah Halber, the police are not the only ones investing themselves into these cases.

In that book, Halber discusses a little-known phenomenon, that of online amateur sleuths who dedicate their free time to solving cold cases and mostly matching people's remains with their identities.

Indeed, there are thousands of people who sit at their computers after work, sifting through countless pictures, records and articles, using various kinds of facial recognition software to try and bring some kind of closure to the restless dead. Basically, The Skeleton Crew is about regular citizens who decided to become regular CSI detectives, and damn good ones at that.

As you can imagine, the book contains plenty of information about the people themselves and this whole subculture, delving into the questions of why and how they do it, what they are ultimately trying to accomplish, how this kind of thing impacts them as people, as well as how successful they are with the whole thing.

We are given a very interesting and in-depth look about a part of society that is composed of unsung heroes, the ones devoting themselves to doing selfless work, knowing the spotlight will never shine on them.

In addition to that, Halber also finds a way to make this rather morbid subject into something entertaining and perhaps even uplifting at times, presenting us with many of the actual cases investigated by the sleuths and describing them in a more of a novelized fashion, without of course ever losing sight of the fact that these are real events she is treating, and the heftiness of their subject matter doesn't really allow you to take them lightly.

I have to say that this balances out what was mentioned in the earlier paragraph, netting hearty doses of both education and entertainment, always keeping you thirsty for more information on this seemingly fantastic and at times surreal world.

Considering everything, if you are looking for a book that won't simply entertain you, but also teach you something surprising, unexpected and morbidly uplifting about the real world we are all actually living in, then I'm certain you are going to find lots of value to this book.

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Deborah Halber Deborah Halber is an American journalist and author whose numerous articles have appeared in MIT Technology Review, The Boston Globe, Symbolia, and a number of university publications. She is also a member of numerous writing organizations, including Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. Recently she released her first book titled The Skeleton Crew, wherein she explores the real-life sleuths of America.