Detective Work with Ballistics (Graphic Forensic Science)

The analysis of guns and bullets may excite readers less than gorier topics in the new Graphic Forensic Science series, but many young people will emerge from this entry impressed by how ballistics specialists can close cases with minimal exposure to blood and guts. Two narrative double-page spreads deliver basics about crime investigation and about firearms’ “fingerprints,” with explanations overloaded with free-floating technical terms. Many readers will skip to the book’s graphic-format sections, where Boccanfuso, the best of the series’ several illustrators, makes the most of the topic’s inherent drama, panning cinematically through a nineteenth-century burglary investigation; a 1991 double murder; and an especially interesting 2004 case that shows how laser-tipped dowels fitted into bullet holes can reveal where shots originated. West provides no sources for his presumably heavily fictionalized text and dialogue, so readers won’t find a model example of nonfiction here, but this accessible treatment of true-crime tales may lead the fascinated to more comprehensive offerings; several are suggested in the book’s brief end matter. Grades 4-7. --Jennifer Mattson