Cold Cases by Charlotte Greig

Synopsis from the back cover: There's nothing more chilling than an unsolved crime, particularly one involving direct harm to human life; be it murder or rape, these are the crimes whose effects extend furthest and cause most pain to humanity: how much worse when they go unsolved and, as such, unpunished?

Such crimes, so-called 'cold cases', are all too common, especially in big cities where hundreds, if not thousands of such incidents remain on file. But there is hope. With the development of science, and the continuing improvements in detection techniques, the re-examination of old, unsolved cases is yielding positive results, often decades after the case originally went 'cold'. This book documents the most fascinating of these cases, and includes:

The murdered heiress, Helen Brach
Albert Fish, child killer
The Green River Killer, Gary Leon Ridgway
Gerald Parker, the 'Bedroom Basher'
The woman in a box
The bone breaker, Joe Clark
Frank Bender, forensic sculptor
Dennis Rader, the 'Bind, Torture, Kill' killer

My thoughts: This book was interesting and informative. In contains information about many different ‘Cold Cases’ (crimes that have been re-investigated years after the crime occurred).

The book is split into five chapters:
In Cold Blood - Murders that were especially shocking.
Cold Comfort - Crimes which made the front page of the newspapers and raised controversial issues.
Cold-steel Killers - Serial killers.
Cool Heads - Crimes solved with a variety of detection methods.
Cold Sweat - Crimes solved with DNA technology.

Each chapter contains details of several cases. For each case we learn about the crime, the detection, how it was solved, and how the criminal was finally brought to justice. There are also several black and white pictures for each case.

This book was very easy to read and understand, as all of the technical terms are clearly described. A good introductory book for anyone interested in crime solving methods.