Body of Evidence by Jeremy Brown

It's Wednesday and it's not even midnight and I'm writing my review!  And the week before Christmas at that!  The way things have been going lately, it's quite an accomplishment, I assure you.  =]  I have read (or started!) lots of books in the last couple weeks that I intended to review.  But I just couldn't make myself finish them for whatever reason.  I started (and read most of!) The Tanglewood Terror by Kurtis Scaletta.  It was ok, but not my favorite book.  I read about half of Saltwater Taffy by Eric Delabarre.  I liked this one ok, too, but I really disliked the bickering that went on between the group of friends.  I'm sure it's just a boy thing, but it sort of got old after a while. 

I also started Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers by Pendred Noyce and I actually liked this one, I just haven't had time to finish.  =]  But it's clever...probably more clever than me!  There are so many parts I want to go back and reread, just to catch the subtle humor that I missed the first time around.  One I plan to finish for sure...just as soon as Christmas is finished! 

So today I'm reviewing Body of Evidence.  My eleven-year-old daughter brought this one home from her library at school and asked if I wanted to read it. Four-Minute Forensic Mysteries?  Absolutely!  It was a very quick read (even quicker because each story is only four minutes long!) and that was a good thing because things tend to get busy this time of the year! 

From the back of the book:  Do you have the forensic tools to solve these mysteries?  A man claims his wife died in a car accident.  But could she still be alive?  A woman's body is found in a lake.  But where was she really drowned?  A safecracker wears gloves and doesn't leave a fingerprint.  But what other body part is unique enough to leave a print?

Fifty-one baffling crime scenes need to be solved.  Can you crack the case before CSI Wes Burton?  You'll need to use all forensic evidence at your disposal, and Burton is the best.  He can tell when a witness is lying by the flick of their wrist.  His Crime Files contain the solution at the end of each mystery, but keep in mind, not every crime scene is as it appears.  The mysteries may be short, but they can be tricky.  You'll need to use all of your wits to weigh the evidence...

From Heather:  I really liked this book.  It's kind of like Encyclopedia Brown in that they have a short mystery and then the solution.  But the content is more grown up.  My only complaint, if I had one, is it took about half the book before I could remember who all the characters were and what they did and if they were male or female (because they only use last names)  It was kind of confusing, and it must have been confusing for other people too because they have a Personnel File at the beginning that introduces each character (maybe if I had read that first, I wouldn't have been so confused!)

I give it three and a half stars.