CAUTION: SOME READERS MAY FIND THE CONTENTS OF THIS REVIEW DISTURBING
I recently received a telephone call from a friend.
"You run a Book Review site, don't you?" she asked
"Yes" I replied.
"Well, I'd like you to review a book. My seventeen-year old son bought it and I found it in his room. It's disgusting and obscene and I want people warned about it."
I asked my friend to let me have the book and I would review it. She, however, had thrown it in the dustbin. I refused point blank to review a book I hadn't read so eventually we came to a compromise - I would order the book and she would pay.
I explained to my friend that I would try to review the book fairly and honestly and that I wasn't prepared to write a negative review if the book didn't merit one, even if she had paid for my copy. She agreed and thus was born this review of Death Scenes - A Homicide Detectives Scrapbook, text by Katherine Dunn, edited and designed by Sean Tejaratchi.
The premise behind the book is that it is a collection of photographs amassed by a homicide detective in the 1920's to 1950's. After his death, the scrapbook turned up in a bookstore, the owners of which passed it on to an employee who decided to restore the photographs for posterity.
If you choose to buy this book, you will be spending your hard-earned money on a gruesome and graphic collection of black and white pictures of dead bodies. Photographs of men, women and children - the victims of accidents, suicide, freak illnesses and murders displayed in all their gory details. The book is hideous - in fact, it is nasty in the extreme.
Reading it is like reading hard-core pornography. As you turn the pages, there is a sense of voyeurism, of doing something that is both illegal and immoral, and the growing feeling that Detective Jack Huddleston must have been one sick puppy to want to collect such photographs in the first place. This book is a pictoral testament to death, sickness and depravity.
I wondered about the wisdom of describing a picture or two here to give you an idea of the books content. One set of pictures shows the result of a car accident and, horrifyingly, the victims decapitated head sits upright in the middle of a dirt road nearby. There are pictures of murdered babies, of dismembered torsos and of shotgun wounds that are too distressing to describe. Each picture has a reproduction of Huddleston's original captions.
Does this book have any merit whatsoever? Well, extremely reluctantly, I have to say yes. It made me think very hard about the work that the members of our police forces, ambulance services and fire brigades do today. It made me very aware of the horrors they have to face in their day - to - day duties and extremely grateful that there are people who are prepared to do such a traumatic job. For that reason alone Death Scenes gets a 1/5 rating from me. (And, in fairness, I should also state that it has an average rating of 4.5 stars from readers on amazon.co.uk.) However, while I agree that the photographs should have been preserved as social history, I must question the wisdom of publishing them in book form and sincerely hope that any retailers who are considering stocking it will keep it well out of reach on the top shelf.
I have a Masters Degree in Forensic Psychology. I have seen photographs of dead bodies before and, while they are never pleasant, none have ever given me nightmares in the way that the contents of this book have. I can see why my friend was so distressed at finding this book in her sons room and strongly suggest that you avoid adding it to your collection.
Publisher: Feral House
ISBN:0922915296
Price: £13.99
Date Reviewed: June 2002
My Rating: 1/5
