Review limited to Goodreads and Amazon due to rating

Rating: 3.5/5

I have been a fan of Kate Winkler Dawson for a while. Her podcast is fantastic and I enjoy her writing style.

American Sherlock started off very strong for me. It was even paced and engaging. The stories were fascinating, including the story of Fatty Arbuckle. It was clear the author had well researched this book. Halfway through, the book lost that engagement for me and felt as though the stories dragged on.

Reviewed for publisher via Netgalley.

Thank you NetGalley for an ebook copy of this book.

Kate Winkler Dawson in American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics and the Birth of American CSI is an interesting biography of Edward Oscar He in rich who was at the forefront of forensic science at the beginning of the 20th century. The book follows his ups and downs, mostly financial, various feuds over the importance of science and scientific literacy through some of the biggest crimes on the western coast of the United States, including the Fatty Arbuckle trials. The writing is clear and concise conveying the science and research quite well. An interesting brisk read for true crime fans.

As biographies go this one was well researched and detailed. The author did a very good job of making the reader feel as if she were living inthe times.

Excellent. A recommended first purchase for all adult nonfiction collections and a nice addition to HS collections

I read this because Jenny Lawson featured it in her book club. I enjoy true crime and forensics reads and this was an enjoyable read.

This was a very engaging and interesting book. The history behind modern day's forensic science and the roles it plays in solving crimes is amazing. The author did a wonderful job of telling the story of Edward Oscar Heinrich. His contributions and innovate approaches to looking at crime scene evidence were amazing. This book tells so much of the history of forensic's and sheds light on hows and whys evidence is treated the way it is. The author also shows how mistakes can be made and the new procedures that come from those mistakes. For anyone that is interested in forensics this is an amazing book and is a must read. For those interested in history this is a book that will show you a different side of history.

This is excellently written and full of unique details about the start of forensic science in America. This was a real quick read that just captured you right away and kept you hooked throughout the whole story. I greatly enjoyed this.

Oscar Heinrich was a fascinating man who channeled his various pursuits into a forensic career, the first of its kind. I liked the way the chapters were broken up by case, with the longer cases being carried over to a second chapter. However, the Allene Lamson case was broken between two chapters. The book was a bit too leisurely paced, and by the time I got to the second Lamson chapter, I had forgotten much of the first chapter. The scientific areas were easily accessible to those without the experience or knowledge.

Slightly bland telling of one of the first criminal forensic scientists. Yes, it was neat to hear how he basically started the processes and made his own company but the "story" went back and forth, going into his past and then moving forward based on what cases were being discussed. The man himself was sexist so it became a lot less interesting after hearing examples of that (and an egoist).

Book Review: American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI

BY MATT ELLIS

With seven Law and Orders, four CSIs, and crime thrillers ranking among the top-selling genres of fiction, it is no mystery that America has an addiction to police procedurals and court drama. Networks and publishers have made an industry out of true crime re-creation and documentaries for those with a more discerning bloodlust that want to know that the murder and mayhem they consume is the real deal. In this environment, it should come as no surprise that Kate Winkler Dawson’s newest book, American Sherlock with its equal parts biography, true crime facts, forensics science history, and social commentary, is primed to be a shotgun blast of mass appeal into the face of the nonfiction marketplace.

At first blush, American Sherlock is a biography about Edward Oscar Heinrich, a man Dawson identifies in the prologue as “a forensic scientist and criminalist from the first half of the twentieth century, a man who changed how crimes were solved before forensics became the foundation of most criminal cases – America’s Sherlock Holmes.”

Dawson tackles Heinrich’s illustrious career by walking the reader through his most famous cases. The chosen series of vignettes reads like the lead plots of the best crime fiction—a Hollywood mogul accused of sexual assault and manslaughter; a devout husband charged with the murder of his wife; a manhunt after a boy finds a body part; and quite possibly the last great American train robbery. That’s not all, but you get the idea.

With her succinct and vivid prose, Dawson places the reader inside the scene of each crime and inside the minds of the key participants, maximizing the immersive experience and effortlessly delivering complicated details, plot twists and all:

Allene’s blood had been transferred to almost every corner of her small home. The pathologist, the undertaker, officers, and countless neighbors had all shuffled through the scene, along with David Lamson and the real estate agent. There were large pools of blood in the bathroom, splashes in the hallway, red footprints leading to both bedrooms, sprays containing hundreds of droplets on each bathroom wall, and smears wiped on doorknobs. Reconstructing the scene would be arduous, even for more experienced detectives.

Dawson goes beyond gruesome details to provide the relevant historical context necessary to shatter popular misconceptions of the time period and expose external forces that complicated each case. For example, most of the key events occurred during what is widely referred to as the Roaring Twenties, a golden era. Dawson dispels all romantic notions of Gatsby-esque socials and speakeasys full of fast jazz and Charleston-dancing flappers. This was a time period of widespread poverty; crime was up and employment was down. “And it was a tumultuous era – the homicide rate in the 1920s, when Heinrich’s most interesting work began, had increased by as much as almost 80 percent from the decade before, thanks to Prohibition,” Dawson writes. In another section, Dawson writes: “The conclusion of World War I in 1918 did not revitalize the economy as the government had promised. Soldiers returned home traumatized, angry, and often with little hope of finding jobs.”

In this book, Dawson stays true to her documentary producer and journalist sensibilities by conducting an exhaustive examination of court records, case files, newspaper coverage, personal correspondence, and estate property. Along with Heinrich’s achievements, Dawson lays bare a man who was prone to bouts of self-destructive egotism, depression, and an obsessive-compulsive personality that challenged both his professional and personal lives. Heinrich pioneered many breakthroughs still used today, but he also championed techniques that later proved to be unreliable and destructive. Throughout his career, this celebrated crime fighter carried a heavy burden of doubt about whether his work led to the convictions of innocent people or the release of criminals into society.

Dawson’s work goes beyond standard biography and true-crime fare to unpack social controversies of the era, some with alarming parallels to contemporary issues almost a century later. In every case, sensational and irresponsible journalism impacted the pursuit of justice. Media sources discredited experts, spun communities into a panic, and ruined the lives of suspects in the court of public opinion, regardless of a jury’s decision.

Dawson’s book is also timely in the wake of the Me Too movement—a stark reminder that our society hasn’t evolved as far as we might want to believe.

While women had won full voting rights the year before, sexual assaults in America were vastly underreported; when survivors did respond to the police, many times they were blamed for being culpable. The popularity of adventurous flappers with their sexuality on display left men scared of false accusations, while women and girls continued to be sexualized.

Each criminal case highlights the fragility of the American justice system with observations that still hold true today. Despite best intentions, investigative techniques and evidentiary facts used in the prosecution of a suspect could prove flawed or misleading years later. In the conclusion of American Sherlock, Dawson leaves us with a poignant warning in an age when communities are at odds with law enforcement and political leaders:

Investigations must start with honest, intelligent officers willing to do good detective work in the field. The public should question law enforcement without impeding its progress, and jurors shouldn’t be swayed by an expert’s reputation – they should evaluate if his theory makes sense. … All forensic science is fallible, even DNA testing. Americans can only hope that investigators will doggedly gather reliable evidence, clues that can get to the truth rather than settle on an outcome that will appease the public or free a guilty suspect.
______________________
Matt Ellis is a retired Army officer currently working as an intelligence and security expert in Guatemala. Over the years, he has served as a HUMINT officer, counterintelligence special agent, linguist, diplomat, musician, and Christmas tree trimmer (the machete kind). He was the story developer and staff screenwriter for Pacific Rim Media, and his short fiction has been published at Thought Catalog. He holds an MS in Information Security from the University of Maryland Global Campus and is studying Fiction at UCR Palm Desert’s Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. Find him at www.letswriting.com.

In my mind, the CSI techniques of a hundred years ago would have been rudimentary at best but this narrative nonfiction book seeks to show that the 1930s in America was actually where CSI was born. I would argue that it made great strides under Edward Oscar Heinrich (mostly because I've read other books on how CSI started in the 1800s-- but the subtitle does say of American CSI.)
The writing is generally very readable but, wow, did the author gloss over some things about EOH that the modern reader might not like about him. For instance, there's one sentence where she mentions that he at one point "blamed the modern woman for America's crime wave." Um, what now? This and other little notes make it pretty clear that the dude wasn't quite the all-right guy that is being portrayed in most of the book. I generally like nonfiction books where the author is a little removed and this author obviously wasn't.

Three stars
This book came out February 11th
ARC kindly provided by Penguin Group Putnam and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Fascinating book that looks at the origins for forensic science. Using real life stories the reader is able to see and feel the struggle of getting forensic science recognized as the science we take for granted now.

This is an engrossing read that chronicles the life of Edward Oscar Heinrich, a brilliant man who

pioneered many techniques that shaped American forensics. Nicknamed the “American Sherlock” during his time, Heinrich has fallen into obscurity—I was shocked to find he doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry. Not only did Heinrich solve more than 2,000 cases, including some of the most famous crimes of his era, but he also discovered many scientific techniques that are still in use today. Kudos to Kate Winkler Dawson for bringing him into the public eye again.


Though I feared the book would be dry, Winkler Dawson's writing style is fast-paced and engaging. Each chapter begins with an Arthur Conan Doyle quote and focuses on a specific case, most often one that illustrates a particular technique Heinrich developed. Winkler Dawson bases her book on a vast collection of documents and other material stored at UC Berkeley, where Heinrich taught criminology courses for decades. Like Holmes, Heinrich's curiosity and expertise on matters related to all facets of criminology was vast. He worked obsessively, often going 24 hours without sleep and traveling the country to work on case after case. Not surprisingly, Heinrich recorded everything (and I mean everything) and often found clues that the police had overlooked. He wasn't infallible: some of his techniques, like handwriting analysis, are no longer considered reliable, but he was far ahead of his time. He was one of the first criminologists to successfully profile suspects, to use insects to establish time of death and to study microscopic soil fragments in order to pinpoint the scene of a crime. Though Heinrich did marry and father two boys, he turned the first floor of his home into a sprawling crime lab where he tested poisons, photographed bullet slugs, analyzed fingerprints, collected thousands of books and studied blood spatter patterns (even going so far as to cut himself and various volunteers).


Like Holmes, Heinrich also had his Watson—a librarian named John Boynton Kaiser. The two friends didn't actually work together, but they corresponded for most of their lives, discussing books, cases Heinrich was working on and personal struggles. Unlike some of Heinrich's rivals, Kaiser didn't seem to mind Heinrich's ego (which raises another key similarity with Holmes). I also found it interesting – and more than a little ironic - that the one thing Heinrich couldn't do was to write detective fiction, despite his ardent desire to do so.

If you're a fan of shows like Bones and CSI, you'll likely enjoy American Sherlock. My only complaint is that I wish the book was a little more detailed. My electronic copy ended at 72 percent; the rest of the book was mostly acknowledgements and footnotes (not notes). With so much material available via the Berkeley archives, I would have liked more information about some of the other cases Heinrich worked on, as well as more specifics about his development of the techniques mentioned above. An additional drawback mentioned by another reviewer is the lack of pictures and illustrations. My hope is that Winkler Dawson and others will write more about Heinrich in the future.

Much thanks to Penguin Group and NetGalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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This is the story of Oscar Heinrich (1881-1953) aka America’s Sherlock Holmes. In a series of well researched cases the reader learns of Heinrich’s methods of handwriting analysis, laboratory testing of trace evidence, blood spatter observation, deductive reasoning, and other techniques that made him a criminal investigator ahead of his time.
“Most investigators in America wouldn’t use profiling until the mid-1950s, ...but Oscar believed he could reconstruct a crime scene by visualizing the habits and actions of the criminal.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Hollywood legend, a family of train robbers, a chemist killed in a laboratory fire, a dismembered female body, and several more cases are featured as we follow the progress of Oscar Heinrich’s evidentiary methods. Along the way the reader is treated to glimpses of his family and friends and musings on his career choices and financial stability. Presented in easily understood, narrative style this is the little known story of the man at the beginning of forensic analysis in the United States judicial system.

Thank you to @penguinrandomhouse for this #advancereaderscopy.

I read many books on forensic science and it's applications. This one focus'd on one of the pioneers of this science. Edward Oscar Heinrich made so many contributions to the new science of forensics, he was called American Sherlock. A Pharmacist by trade, he applied his love of information to the art of detecting that information from the available surroundings. He went on to become one of the first "expert witnesses" in high profile criminal cases. The historical information I've learned from this book adds so much more enjoyment to my amateur skills, I'm only sorry I finished it in a few hours. Now to reread so I see what I missed. A great book for anyone who is interested in the back story of forensic science along with the development of current procedures.

What a fantastic history! I was so pleased to have found this through a Shelf Awareness email and receive an ecopy through NetGalley. As I enjoy crime shows such as Law and Order and NCIS, I was immediately drawn to the story of the man who pioneered modern forensic science.

Edward Oscar Heinrich, "America's Sherlock" (though he hated the nickname), lived a life fuller than most. Forced to provide for his family as a teenager after his father's suicide, he struck out into the world as a pharmacist, which would lead him into the field of forensic sciences.

Providing the courts with expert analysis, he would testify in some of the nation's most famous murder trials, including that of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, a precursor to Hollywood's current #metoo climate. Heinrich would provide new techniques such as fingerprinting, ballistics, forensic entomology, and blood spatter analysis, to aid law enforcement in getting results, that, while not always exact, were more solid than previous methods, which were sketchy at best.

Kate Winkler Dawson has crafted an excellent book here. The writing is lyrical, much in the style of Devil in the White City and Destiny of the Republic. It reads more like a novel than a dry history reference. Heinrich comes alive: his struggles, his obsession, his life's work. And I was glad to learn so much of where modern police work came from.

The only drawback is that there are no images (perhaps they will be in the finished copy?). I only mention this because when using books in the classroom, the photographic evidence of my history books was often as valuable as the written information. But otherwise, this is a solid book about crime and punishment in early twentieth-century America.

Thank you to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam’s Sons for providing me with this copy to review.

I was so stoked to get American Sherlock for an Advanced Reader Copy. I love stuff like CSI, true crime podcasts, documentaries, etc. How exciting to get a look at the history of forensic science.
The name Edward Oscar Heinrich didn't ring any bells for me and I immediately had to see the face of this insanely genius innovator criminalist investigator. His serious face at his desk didn't really do anything for me, but this book definitely filled in the gaps.
E.O. Heinrich is not a super known name but his influence in the judicial system and scientific community should be shouted from the rooftops and I LOVED learning about his life and the cases he helped with. It's really fascinating to read about his deductions and reasoning that changed cases and history. It's bananas to hear about the scientific steps that he improved and adjusted. He really was the "American Sherlock".
American Sherlock format bounced around quite a bit from his famous cases to his personal life and growing up. I enjoyed both parts individually, but the format was really rough for me. Each section seemed to pull me out of the cases or stories from his life. I would have preferred a light introduction to his personal life and chapters on the cases. The personal life stories often felt like an interruption from the real stories.
The Epilogue also seemed to carry on a bit longer than it needed to be. The book went from a really interested biographical work of E.O. Heinrich to a really preachy bit directed and police and forensic specialists. That lost me pretty fast because outside of my election votes, I really have no impact on the future of forensic science.
I also can't believe there are NO PICTURES in this book. With all of the descriptions of prominent people and his expansive hoarding collection from his cases, I expected photographs. Even the author states that she took some photos while she toured the facility where people were cataloging the collection, but not for the book? I really think photos would enhance this book.
All that aside, it was an okay book to pick up and read through. He was a fascinating man with a bigger impact than society acknowledges.

Interesting subject matter but just a little too slow and dry for me. Damn my short attention span! I blame Twitter.