To him I want to say that it really is okay for someone to do good work and be selfless, kind and compassionate. This author is all that and had found a way to apply her abilities to do some good in this rough world in which we live. It IS hard to relate to someone who would put their own needs aside to do good things. Such people are indeed rare.
But besides to just reacting to that review from a person so sadly deprived of such encounters as to need to pull someone else's work and good deeds down to his own level with his rather cruel one star rating as his weapon of jealousy and animosity, I want to add my own take on 'Portraits of Guilt:'
I found it inspiring, extremely well written and balanced in content. I loved getting to know the woman behind the work as well as more about her work itself. Boylan masterfully manages to make what could have been a dull documentary, as full bodied and real as a good novel. Her story is her life, and she tells in candidly and with real heart. All of it. How many of us would be willing to do that?
Nothing less than five stars from me for an outstanding, warm and very well written first book by a good hearted lady which will keep you glued to your seat. I can't wait to read her next offering.
I'm not sure I would have been as gentle and kind in delivering the message about errors police make as Jeanne Boylan was in PORTRAITS OF GUILT. She utilized the format of a good 'novel' to tansport the reader through important lesson after lesson about mistakes made in major cases with a personal story (hers) as the vehicle to tie them all together, but her intent in being so gentle is perfectly clear. She's being a diplomat. However, she had the right to use a club over the head and didn't.
Boylan is sounding an alarm in the world of investigations.We'd better listen. After seeing a child murdered who could have been saved had police not errored, she sets out to make a difference by quietly calling the system into accountability for it's arrogance and ignorance when it comes to interviewing crime victims.
She's telling us that recovering eyewitness memory of a perpetrator's face is a very complex task embedded deeply in psychology and not as now thought, based simply in art and she suggests a route of study that would bring her field out of the often useless cartoon realm and into the world of academia. This superb book will be required reading over in the psychology department this year and I've decided to make it required reading in my law classes as well. It is well written and very informative.
My only complaint is that I wish she'd have been a little less diplomatic. When you see the high cost of errors as proven throughout her book, (literally lives) you know that the system has to heed her call and step into this new century with the valuable insights into crime victim's mind that Boylan has gained through actual real case experience.When you put this book down, you'll find yourself examining what you can do to help.