Donald A. Davis

This is the story of the fighter mission that changed World War II.
It is the true story of the man behind Pearl Harbor---Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto---and the courageous young American fliers who flew the million-to-one suicide mission that shot him down.
Yamamoto was a cigar-smoking, poker-playing, English-speaking, Harvard-educated expert on America, and that intimate knowledge served him well as architect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the next sixteen months, this military genius, beloved by the Japanese people, lived up to his prediction that he would run wild in the Pacific Ocean. He was unable, however, to deal the fatal blow needed to knock America out of the war, and the shaken United States began its march to victory on the bloody island of Guadalcanal. ...… (más)

What Steve Thomas has written is less case-specific and more sour grapes than the true crime expose I had hoped for. If you're someone who follows the case, listens to the podcasts, watches the specials, and are looking for some plausible theory to what happened to JonBenet, you might be interested in this behind-the-scenes look at a complicated, if not botched, investigation.

Steve Thomas pulls together the minutia and presents a logical conclusion that sadly never had its day in court.

The Ramseys are portrayed as non-compliant and evasive, handled by a crack team of top lawyers who protected their clients from prosecution by way of lingering silence and arranged meetings with ground rules that stymied the detective's ability to perhaps properly question them.

Hundreds of pages are dedicated to all the ways lawyers, the DAs office, and specialists brought in went wrong in this investigation. Too much shared information. A refusal to call the Ramseys "suspects" for a myriad of reasons, none of which were because their role in JonBenet's death was implausible. The inability to convene a grand jury that would indict. The proverbial "trial by media."

I don't blame the detective for being angry and frustrated, but what he's done is to vent on the page ad nauseum. His book isn't as much about the case as it is slinging mud at all the folks who didn't subscribe to his theory. Whether he's right or wrong, it's the tunnel vision and vitriol that makes me wonder if he was more supported in his pursuit of the Ramseys, if there would have been a different outcome. Would Patsy have been indicted? Would it have been wrongly so?

I admit, his theory is one of the best I've read, but what he doesn't have an explanation for is the where and how of the murder. A short fuse temper does not a murderer make. Does that mean she didn't do it? No. There's enough circumstantial evidence to give one pause, but probably not enough to support "beyond a reasonable doubt." I think that's the problem with this case and the reason it'll never be solved. A shame, really, because there should be justice for JonBenet. While there were highlights in this book, it wasn't what I would call a page-turner. Respect to this detective for his hard work on the case. I just wish he had a different angle for his book.… (más)

There is something compelling about reading a true-crime story from one's home town. I was in Boulder for my first year in college the year JonBenet died, though thankfully I was too immersed in trying to pass my 2nd semester physics class to worry much about following this case when it started. Almost 20 years later I finally read a whole book on this murder drama, and having read lots of crime genre novels recently, I was amazed at how little the investigation into JonBenet's murder followed basic murder investigation procedures. The crime scene was never secured, the primary witnesses/suspects were never really required to answer questions that seem obviously vital to the case, and rather than discovering who killed the girl, this case opened up Boulder's dysfunctional and inexperienced crime investigation and prosecution systems to ridicule and international scrutiny.
I was really not impressed with the author's attitude towards Boulder and Boulder's local culture, and in his attitude I could see a glimmer of what is now making police so dangerous to the people they are meant to serve and protect. Most of the time Boulder's kinder, gentler police culture worked to support a creative, safe environment that resembles some European towns far more than it resembles most of the US. But, considering how unprofessional and inefficient this system turned out to be when faced with a major murder investigation, I can see why Thomas was so frustrated with Boulder's police and criminal justice system.
Having read this book, I have my own theory (doesn't everyone?) as to who killed JonBenet- I suspect that her brother Burke caused her head injury and maybe some of her strangulation injuries as well, and that the rest was their mother's attempts at covering up the crime and protecting the boy. If that is what happened I can understand easily why the parents would refuse to really help with the investigation, and why the crime scene was so badly contaminated and compromised by JonBenet's family. I doubt that enough clear evidence exists now to prove that I'm wrong, though.
In any case, I enjoyed this book more than I expected to, even with Thomas's unpleasant attitude towards Boulder.… (más)