Welcome to the Book Review Bistro. I’m Jacob with Wyatt, and we are
reviewing Fingerprints and Talking Bones: How Real-Life Crimes are Solved by
Charlotte F. Jones. Can a skeleton tell us how it happened to die? Or can plants help
catch suspects? Are parrots capable of leading police to crooks? Fingerprints and Talking
Bones will answer more than just these questions, and it will back the answers with more
than enough proof. This book deals with forensic science and criminal investigations.
Jones’s purpose is to educate people on the various crimes that are committed
each year and how the authorities solve them. The book reveals that whenever an
unidentified body turns up, police put it through a series of tests to help identify the body.
Computer software has sped up the crime-solving process to identify people, find out
who committed what crime, and where the suspect lives. The book also clues people in
on animals that are not as dumb as they let on. What we learned from the book is that
pigs are just as good at sniffing out drugs as dogs are.
Jones states, “You might not find pigs working in your local police department,
but it is possible to train pigs in the same way dogs are trained…. But some police
departments might find them useful and cost-efficient as a weapon against drug
trafficking.”
Our overall response was “Holy cow!” The book has a big index, glossary,
bibliography, good page layouts, odds and ends section, places to visit, and books like it.
For the most part, the book was easy to follow and it was easy to understand. A strength
is that it goes into very descriptive details. Something we especially liked is there are
crime facts after each chapter such as telling about the millions of property crimes that
occur. A weakness is that there are no colored pictures or photos in the book. However
the book could easily be updated by taking real crime-scene photographs or by coloring
the illustrations. Also, it would not be a bad idea to add some captions to the pictures.
Our knowledge about the topic has greatly improved after reading this book. The book is
similar to other non-fiction books by giving examples of the crimes the book describes.
Fingerprints and Talking Bones by Charlotte Foltz Jones was a great
informational book. If it were a particular food, it would be a triple-decker chocolate
pecan pie with coconut shavings and melted chocolate drizzled on top. It was that great of
a book! The advice we give to readers is to read the section you are reading, and then
reread it to better understand it. You might want to do this with the whole book. We had
to. This book is a good book for anybody to read, especially for people who love books
on forensic crime-solving. Here at the Book Review Bistro, we give Fingerprints and
Talking Bones four spoons because this is a great book that deserves to be a delightful
dessert.