True Stories of C.S.I.: The Real Crimes Behind the Best Episodes of the Popular TV Show »

Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D., numbers among her degrees a master's in forensic psychology from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She has published thirty-two books, and writes forensic science articles for Court TV's Crime Library.

The bestselling forensic psychologist examines the true crimes that inspired the television smash hit, C.S.I.

Katherine Ramsland follows the evidence and revisits some of the most absorbing episodes of the phenomenally popular C.S.I. television franchise, and explores the real-life crimes that inspired them. She also looks into the authenticity of the forensic investigations recreated for the dramatizations, and the painstaking real-life forensic process employed in every one of the actual cases—from notorious mass-murderer Richard Speck, to the massacre of Buddhist monks in an Arizona Temple, to a baffling case of apparent spontaneous combustion.

Publishers Weekly

For those unfamiliar with the crime-scene forensics television drama C.S.I., be forewarned: there will be blood, gore and dismembered body parts. Prolific author (of both novels and non-fiction) and forensic specialist Ramsland digs up the real life corollaries to 25 popular episodes, some obviously drawn from a single source ("Gentle, Gentle," based on the 1996 murder of 6-year-old Jon-Benet Ramsey), others composed from disparate incidents ("Blood Drops," drawing from the 2002 Flores Family murders in California, Charles Manson's horrific 1969 murder spree and Jeffrey MacDonald's 1970 family slaughter). Not all episodes lead to true crime; perhaps disappointingly, the series' popular "miniatures killer" storylines were not based on cases, but on crime scene dollhouses built in the 1940s as a teaching aid by philanthropist Frances Glessner Lee. Gore and devastation is handled in a responsibly clinical tone, but Ramsland can overstep when speculating without scientific backup or attribution (stating, for instance, that the admiration female sex offenders receive from their young partners is "probably the source of the addiction"). Clunky prose can also distract, but that shouldn't matter to C.S.I. fans, who will enjoy this professional-and professionally morbid-treatment of their favorite T.V. crime dramas.
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