I'd heard of the forensic challenges surrounding the mass graves in Bosnia, and I've read and watched enough Bones stories (Kathy Reichs' books and the TV series based on them) to have some idea about forensic anthropology. So, it was interesting to read more about this gruesome and difficult puzzle. The author's writing is fairly easy to follow, mostly. His attempt at explaining how DNA matching works was awful, full of jargon and jumbled enough that even with my science background (I've studied some genetics in college) I still felt a bit lost trying to follow that bit of the text. There's a lot of repetition and quaint bad grammar of the sort I'm used to from writers for whom English is not their primary language.

Still, the story told in this book is interesting and engaging enough to make most of these wrinkles blend into the background. I really wished, though, that there were some images in the text- maps, photographs of locations mentioned a lot in the story, diagrams of equipment, etc.- that might have made the more fact-heavy sections easier to digest. Overall, though, this seems like it would be a book that readers without as much science education could follow, and the history of the war that created these thousands of unidentified human remains is one many people know very little about beyond what was covered on TV news shows during that conflict. ( )

In the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars, and particularly the massacre at Srebrenica, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) established a massive DNA laboratory to identify the remains of missing persons, return them to their families for burial, and provide documentation for war crimes trials. The ICMP developed new techniques and designed affordable equipment for processing the forensic evidence on a large scale. This mostly Bosnian organization soon had a global reputation for success and efficiency, and it began to field requests for assistance in identifying persons missing as the result of natural and humanitarian disasters in all parts of the world.

The subtitle “solving the world's greatest forensic puzzle” is misleading. The book is light on forensics and science. The emphasis is actually on politics and law, policies and procedures. While minor errors are to be expected in advance reading copies like the one I read, this book needed more extensive editing than it was likely to receive this late in the publication process. The book is poorly organized and repetitive. There's enough material here for an interesting article in a magazine like Smithsonian, but unfortunately the book is padded with facts and details that are only marginally related to its stated purpose. ( )

Not knowing much about the Bosnian War, I quickly found myself confused while reading this book. The author tends to jump around a lot and it seemed disorganized. I intend to return to the book, once I know a little more about the subject.

Lacking in cohesion. Jennings pulls together many elements to the story, but I found the forensics was the weakest and least discussed element. ( )

I really wanted to love this book, but for someone who was rather ignorant of the Bosnian War this was not a good place to start. Don't get me wrong, the content was fascinating and I did learn a lot, but I was often confused by the disjointed stories.

I understand that I received an uncorrected version of the book, but it was more than just grammatical issues. The author often jumped from one story to another within a paragraph. There were times when he would start an explanation and then end up on a tangent without any conclusion to his first idea. I feel that the book could use a good bit of "cut and paste." It almost seemed like the author wanted to make sure he wrote down everything in his head when it occurred but then never went back to make sure everything was in the right place.

With that being said, the content itself was very informative. I really enjoyed learning about the ICMP, how it was created, the people it helped in Bosnia, and the help it has supplied internationally. With all the terrible things happening in the world, this is one group that does amazing things that allow families to heal. ( )