title: Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook
author: Sean Tejaratchi
description: Warning: this sad, powerful, grotesque collection of black-and-white photos of mostly dead, often naked, human beings is not for the easily disturbed. The introductory text by Katherine Dunn (author of <i><a href="/exec/obidos/ISBN=0446391301/${0}">Geek Love</a></i>) helps give a context to the macabre scrapbook, and the handwritten captions display irony and sometimes humor; but this is no antiquarian's sentimental portrait of the past. This book documents butchery and brutality, horrible disease and mental illness, suicide and murder. And as Dunn observes, the eye of the beholder is not innocent: "The old cop, like the old con, tries to trick us into forgiveness and complicity. By witnessing he has participated, by understanding he is culpable. And his real purpose is to disguise the truth--that he started out terrified and ended up liking it, fascinated, an aficionado."
zlib_text: >
  
  
  Imitation in Death
  
  
  In Death [19]
  
  
  J. D. Robb
  
  
  Penguin (2003)
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Rating:
  
  
  ★★★★☆
  
  
  Tags:
  
  
  Mystery & Detective
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Prologue
  
  Summer of 2059 was a mean and murderous bitch who showed no sign of lightening
  her mood. September dragged in on the sweaty heels of August and smothered New
  York in a wet blanket of heat, humidity, and foul air.  
  
  Summer, Jacie Wooton thought, was killing business.  
  
  It was barely two
  
  
  # Chapter 1
  
  You never saw it all. No matter how many times you walked through the blood
  and the gore, no matter how often you looked at the horror man inflicted on
  man, you never saw it all.  
  
  There was always something worse, something meaner, or crazier, more vicious,
  more cruel.  
  
  As Lieutenant Eve Dallas stood over what had once been a woman, she wondered
  when she would see worse than this.  
  
  Two of the uniform cops on scene were still retching at the mouth of the
  alley. The sound of their sickness echoed back to her. She stood where she
  was, hands a