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Summary: I smell a TV series! It's good. Really good.
Review: Terrific book. Amazing, compassionate and courageous woman. I scout books for a film studio in LA and read nearly every biography that comes out. Most are essentially self aggrandizing, this one is definitely not. Instead, Boylan writes a tribute to the people she's worked with and fearlessly points out the frightening ineptness of police.But with that, she also serves up powerful suggestions for positive change. Effective, enlightening and blatently, a TV series waiting to happen. Who owns the rights to this story, we want to make a bid.
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Summary: Uplifiting, inspirational and candid.
Review: I adored this author's candid writing and learned so much from her story. I love to read about people who are not afraid to take on the status quo and this is most certainly a woman who does that. But the book is not an "in your face" kind of story. Instead, it is very thoughful and highly insightful. You feel yourself being emotionally drawn in to each story you travel through and genuinely coming to care about all of the real life people the author encounters, just as she was in her effort to help them. It's a "biography" in a sense, but the book is really NOT about the author at all, it is about the people she meets in her journey and about the tremendous need for change in a criminal justice system that is so outdated as to be laughable. Boylan is just the first one to turn the light on in an area that no one before her has cared enough to examine and that is, how the justice system misunderstands and consequently destroys eyewitness memory. This book is essentially BRILLIANT in it's delivery of an important message to police investigators. Wake up before you make these mistakes again. Read it, you'll see for yourself.
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Summary: Unafraid of the truth!
Review: Moving, gripping, superbly written, packed with honesty and loaded with useful information. This author is plowing brand new ground in criminal investigations. No wonder the 'system' finds her unsettling. She tells it like it is. And the best part is, she's right. The proof is in each and every one of the cases she writes about and she lived them all. This book should be standard issue in every criminal justice program in the country.
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Summary: Edgar Award Nominee -- Very highly recommended
Review: In one of the most important true crime novels of our decade, Jeanne Boylan shares her insights into the most deadly crimes of our nation. Including the Poly Klaas kidnapping, the Unabomer, Susan's Smith's drowning of her own children, and the Oklahoma City bombing, Boylan takes the reader behind the scenes into the murky world of composite drawings. Victimized on a rural road at the age of twenty-one, Boylan has made it her life's mission to assist witnesses in the recapturing of the image of the violator's face. Boylan works to combat the damage well-meaning artist and police agencies as they attempt to create composite drawings of suspects, usually from photos taken from mug shot books. Boylan employs an interview technique that keys into the subconscious' memory of the perpetrator, drawing the resulting descriptions freehand on a sketchpad that stays out of the victim's sight until the portrait is completed. By working from memory, rather than triggers, Boylan producing startling accurate portraits. In addition to the stories of her professional life, Boylan reveals the maverick behind the artist. With a commitment to victims that outweighs all other considerations, Boylan honestly reveals the damage her career exacted on her marriage and personal life. Frequently, just as she and her husband headed out the door for much needed time together, a frantic call pulls her back to the world of killers and their victims. Boylan has a gift for uncovering false testimony and mistakes in composite drawings. Challenged by a world where her remarkable beauty, sex and gifts work to her detriment when working with many local law enforcement agencies all the way up to the FBI, this forensic artist blazes her own path. A civilian who balks at red tape and follows a path uniquely her own -- a path that can reconstruct a witness' memory from years ago and result in an arrest. Concise, well written, and fascinating, PORTRAITS OF GUILT is a must read. Very highly recommended.
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Summary: An truly educational autobiography. Great book.
Review: I wanted some summer reading with real substance and I certainly found it in "Portraits of Guilt." What a moving story, but it's equally informative too. This woman has identified an extremely serious deficit in the process of working with crime victims that stunningly, police have never looked at before. (Frightening that something so important as crime victim psychology and how the memory works can still be so overlooked in investigations.) Yet she doesn't write this book as a routine "textbook" at all. Instead, she manages to make it a great entertaining read and autobiography, yet quietly educates you throughout in a very subtle and gentle way, just like her personality and her interviewing techniques. I learned a great deal, and I absolutely loved this book for just the story sake too. It met all my needs. I just ordered two for my friends as gifts. I hope they will be as inspired as I now am to get out and do something worthwhile with my own life like this author is doing with hers.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting aspects of criminal identification
Review: I found this book to be a little on the flighty side, maybe becaue the author was constantly on the run either by jet plane or special car to get to the next city for the next briefing for the next interview of the next witness of the next crime and no time in beteen to eat, sleep, change her clothes or even brush her teeth. She had to answer each phone call from anyone who wanted her service and I found that to be a little too much. Surgeons don't operate on such a hectic schedule or they would burn out in a month. I would have liked to learn more about the interviews themselves...some lasted for days...but little is revealed about how she reached into the traumtized memory to elicit such a detailed drawing of the faces. Nor did she offer any ideas about how her talents could be taught to others although she maintained her method should be learned in order to obtain accurate descriptions immediately after the criminal act. On the whole an interesting read but not a text book outlook for solving a crime quickly.
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Summary: Tough Criminal Attorney Gives This One a Thumbs Up.
Review: I saw the author of this book on GOOD MORNING AMERICA recently and was intrigued. She was articulate, intelligent and spoke of her most interesting involvement in the Oklahoma City Bombing. She's also on a Canadian Magazine cover. So when I saw this "new paperback" facing the entrance in a major bookstore recently, I picked it up with little idea of what to really expect. I have to report that I am stunned at this story, the depth of this woman and the range of her experiences in every major case that I can even remember being on the international news. It's easy to understand why she's in such demand. Raw talent. In her career and in her writing. My eyes were really opened through her stories about the amazingly obvious mistakes cops make and I can see as she said on ABC News, why things got so off track in the Oklahoma case. It's all explained in her book. Too bad the American authorities didn't pay attention. I bet they do now! I put all my other plans aside and read this over a weekend because I literally could not put it down. Great read and best of all, quite an education for this man who thought I knew it all. And I'm VERY difficult to please. I am now going to order a hardcover to just keep like new in my "great books library." I'd love for my two daughters to read her inspirational story someday when they are old enough. This woman is one good role model.
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Summary: A rare gem
Review: Well...that book is the story of a rare gem.After surviving an attack in her early twenties,and having to pass throught the frustration of the investigation that followed and gave no result,she manage to emerge with her own special way to deal with the recovery of the image left in the memory of the victim.She blew off the result of the tradiditional way to do this and has been involve in many famous case like Polly Klass,the Unabomber and the Oklahoma bombing.She gave all she had to help victims find peace with themselves.She's a real hero and that book is the story of her magical accomplishment.Hope you have a chance to read it.
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Summary: Deserving "Best True Crime Drama of the Year" Edgar Nominee
Review: I read that this book was among the finalists for the prestigious EDGAR Award as "Best True Crime Drama" of the year. Historically, the 'Edgars' are not handed out to less than the very best work.Hence the prestige in the nomination alone. I ordered it and was definitely not disappointed! Excellent book. This is a refreshingly honest and new look into the back scenes of crime, written from a rare personal perspective of one woman who was involved in every case and whose source of passion is through her personal experience. I was extremely impressed with her candor, her self deprecating and humble style of giving credit to all those around her for the successes and to the remarkable way in which she honored the courage of all the people she so lovingly talks about in her cases.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: I do not normally read books. It has likely been 10 years or better since the last book I have read. When I started reading Portraits of Guilt, I knew that I couldn't put the book down. It was so interesting, and yet very down to earth. Jeanne put just enough of her personal life in there, that I could relate to her. Not only did I relate to her, but grew quite fond of her as a person by the time I finished the book. She is an amazing person with a special talent/gift. She unselfishly shares her gift with the world, at the expense of having a normal personal life. For that, America owes Jeanne much gratitude. And for all of the cases her amazing drawings have helped to close, America owes her and her ideas respect. The only thing I didn't like about the book, was that I finished it so quickly. I was left wishing there was a volume 2, that I could go pick up the next day somewhere! Great job Jeanne Boylan!! God Bless you and yours!
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