cold cases (criminal investigation)

This book looks at unsolved cases in the criminal world, including undetectable poison, kidnappings that ended in tragedy, and a hijack mystery.

Hollywood chronicler William J. Mann draws on a rich host of sources, including recently released FBI files, to unpack the story of the enigmatic William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, and the diverse cast that surrounded him before he was murdered in 1922-- including three beautiful, ambitious actresses, the ruthless founder of Paramount locked in a struggle for control of the film industry, a grasping stage mother, a devoted valet, and a gang of two-bit thugs, any of whom might have fired the fatal bullet.

Readers learn about painstaking detection techniques such as bloodstain analysis, ballistics, toxicology, and DNA profiling. These are just some of the invaluable tools of law enforcement referenced that are helping police solve the most perplexing cold cases.

"When Felix Brewer meets Bernadette 'Bambi' Gottschalk at a Valentine's Dance in 1959, he charms her with wild promises, some of which he actually keeps. Thanks to his lucrative--if not all legal--businesses, she and their three little girls live in luxury. But on the Fourth of July, 1976, Bambi's comfortable world implodes when Felix, newly convicted and facing prison, mysteriously vanishes"--Jacket flap.

Detective Harry Bosch, now in the Open-unsolved Unit, receives a call from the DA telling him a serial killer has confessed to several murders. Harry must interview the man about a case he couldn't crack involving the murder of a 22-year-old woman whose body was never found.

In a case that spans 20 years, Harry Bosch links the bullet from a recent crime to a file from 1992, the killing of a young female photographer during the L.A. riots. Harry originally investigated the murder, but it was then handed off to the Riot Crimes Task Force and never solved. Now Bosch's ballistics match indicates that her death was not random violence, but something more personal, and connected to a deeper intrigue. Like an investigator combing through the wreckage after a plane crash, Bosch searches for the "block box," the one piece of evidence that will pull the case together.

Back in 1985, two girls disappeared, and fledgling cop Lucas Davenport couldn't get over it, even when his boss declared the case closed. Now a house has been torn down, the bodies of two girls wrapped in plastic have been found, and Davenport is back on the case.

The traditions of the Tohono O'odham people are woven into the fabric of three families as Dr. Lani Walker and Pima County homicide investigator Brian Fellows join forces to protect a little girl who witnessed her mother's murder.

Los Angeles detective Harry Bosch begins to question his entire career when, while taking a killer's confession, he learns that he missed a vital clue while investigating a still-unsolved 1993 murder that would not only have closed that case, but would have prevented several other killings.

Tory Brennan and her friends are exposed to a canine parvovirus when they rescue a dog from a medical testing facility and soon realize they have heightened senses, which they use to solve a cold case murder.