An exhaustive account of investigation principles, more academic in conception than immediately practical.
A primer offers basic principles of investigation.
Anim-Danquah (Principles of Interrogation, 2013) cautions readers that since the stakes are so high, an investigator can never be too meticulous. His brief but comprehensive survey is broadly conceived to cover “training material for all levels in all Security Services and Intelligence Agencies but equally a very good source of reference after formal training or during professional practice.” The author proceeds systematically, discussing the chief elements of the various kinds of investigation, the basic considerations of interrogation, and the types of evidence and the methods of gathering it. In addition, he analyzes in considerable detail the kinds of modus operandi: 23 different factors that in their totality define any “particular criminal activity or offence.” He devotes an unusual amount of attention to the filling out of reports and the distinction between various types, and he includes samples. This is especially peculiar since the author’s explanatory scope is so broad—it can’t possibly be the case that every investigator in every jurisdiction is confronted with the same forms. Equally puzzling is his protracted assessment of the various distractions that could stymie a successful investigation; for example, he warns against the deflection of one’s attention that could be caused by offensive odors. The book concludes with a series of helpful illustrative case studies that feature instructional questions. Anim-Danquah worked in investigations and intelligence for the government of Ghana for more than 20 years, and his thoroughness and rigor are clear expressions of that expertise. His primer is best used as a reference source—an encyclopedic catalog of all the basic ingredients of investigation, very generally understood. But it’s not an instructional guide in the sense of providing much actionable counsel—readers will learn much more about the various categories of evidence than its professional collection. In addition, the author too often dwells on points so common-sensical as to be banal. For example, it seems unnecessary to insist that aspiring investigators check their spelling on the reports they file.
An exhaustive account of investigation principles, more academic in conception than immediately practical.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5462-6515-3
Page Count: 242
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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BOOK TO SCREEN
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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