What We’re Reading Now:

Kate Winkler Dawson has been the featured author for our latest series of “WLT On the Craft of Writing” events around the state. Which means that I’ve been lucky enough to hear her talk firsthand about her wonderful new book, American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI, in Austin, Dallas, and Houston (with events in Georgetown and Waco still to come). Honestly, I could listen to her all day long and not get bored – and reading the book is just as much of a treat. During her research, Kate opened box after box containing the life’s work of Edward Oscar Heinrich – a forensic science pioneer who kept meticulous notes documenting his many breakthroughs – and managed to distill that enormous pile of information into a narrative nonfiction read that is suspenseful, surprising, and beautifully written. Whether studying the sand at a grave to determine its origins, or analyzing a pair of overalls left behind by a band of murderous train robbers, or testifying against Fatty Arbuckle in one of the most famous trials of the 1920s, Oscar Heinrich took forensics science into the modern age and forever changed crime scene investigation. His story needed to be told and I can’t imagine another author telling it as well or as thoroughly.

If you are a fan of true crime tales and police procedurals, this book is for you. If you’re a history buff and love discovering people you’ve never heard of who have made extraordinary contributions, this book is for you. If part of the pleasure of reading for you is the learning, this book is for you. If you’ve ever binge-watched CSI or Criminal Minds or Law & Order or, fittingly, Sherlock, this book is for you. (In other words, this book is for you!)