The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths Are Solving America's Coldest Cases

Currently, upwards of forty thousand people in America are dead and unaccounted for. These murder, suicide, and accident victims, separated from their names, are being adopted by the bizarre online world of amateur sleuths. It’s DIY CSI, solving cold cases from the comfort of your living room… In an “absorbing look at a very odd corner of our world” ( ), provides an entree into the gritty and tumultuous world of Sherlock Holmes–wannabes who race to beat out law enforcement—and one another—at matching missing persons with unidentified remains. These web sleuths pore over facial reconstructions (a sort of Facebook for the dead) and other online clues as they vie to solve cold cases and tally up personal scorecards of dead bodies. There is “no better guide for navigating this multifaceted world than Deborah Halber’s book” ( ), and probes the macabre underside of the Internet and how even the most ordinary citizen with a laptop and a knack for puzzles can reinvent herself as a web sleuth. “Engaging and artful” ( ), this witty and insightful look at the fleeting nature of identity is “brilliant” ( ).