Forensic Fun

[Love Is Murder Conference]

This week at Schaumburg Twp. Dist. Library we had the pleasure of listening to authors and policemen Michael Black and Dave Case talk to an audience about crime scenes. They set up a 'body' and a 'scene' and the audience helped 'process' the scene. We had about 115 in attendance. This is an enormous reponse for us for an author program, and we were thrilled with the entire event. If you have not heard these gentlemen speak at LIM, make it a point to do so. I can't believe what an excellent sense of humor both have when they have clearly seen some serious things in their careers. Plus they are both wonderful writers. I am not usually a male police procedural reader but really enjoyed books from both men.

It did strike me, while listening to the audience ask literally 100s of questions, that the folks of Schaumburg are extremely keen on crime scene details. I can't believe how many started a question with "On Law and Order..." or "On CSI I saw..." I had to wonder where other questions came from. Then I was thinking that probably most mystery writers have this fascination as well, including myself.

I'm currently taking 'Forensics for Writers,' an online class at a local community college. On the pre-course quiz, I scored a 33%. If anyone can email me ([e-mail]) and tell me what the Greiss Test is I'd appreciate it, by the way.

In the discussion section for my course, some folks mentioned that they had only marked 1-2 wrong on the pre-test. Seriously. I'll bet they were in our audience this week, too.

Forensic series are taking the mystery world by storm now of course too. I reviewed two teen titles for Crimespree a while back where the girl protagonist helped her coroner father with autopsies. Never again will I eat while reading teen mysteries. I once heard someone say that teen books were 'clean adult titles'. Maybe 50 years ago, friends - there is no sheltering of reality in today's titles, and consequently more teens read them instead of skipping right to the adult section. Check out The Christopher Killer - it's good, and the start of a series.

Banned Books Week is upon us. Go to www.ala.org for more information. I always like to think of this week as a celebration of the classics. More teen titles are banned then any other, and frankly that provides wonderful marketing for some teen books. Nothing appeals to some teens more then something prohibited. Or some adults.

I am off to do my 10 chapters of reading for the Forensics Class. The online gun diagrams are pretty funny. I will try to duplicate some in future blog postings.

-Amy Alessio