What If Law Enforcement Officer Refused to Give Up ?

Surrounded by cases dating back to 1995 and burdened as the only detective assigned the missing persons desk, Detroit Police Detective Shannon Jones grows tired of working one case at a time and instead convinces FBI Special Agent Leslie Larsen to help her mine public and law enforcement databases and use DNA matching to close the cases once and for all. Their only problem, the bodies are buried in pauper graves.

Through rain-soaked cemetery digs, crumbling case files, and bone-filled body bags, follow Detective Jones, Agent Larsen, and their team of female forensic anthropologists and scientists who expose Detroit’s painful history of neglect for poor and disenfranchised murder victims. Watch the FBI orchestrate the largest exhumation of cold case murder victims it has ever conducted.  Set against the backdrop of scarce records, bureaucratic obstacles, and timeworn graves, Women Who Talk to the Dead is a powerful testament to the determination and innovation of a team—led largely by women—who refused to let the dead be forgotten.

Devlin Barrett with The New York Times said, "Women detectives and agents may not fit the mold of what some people imagine police work is, but they play a unique role… Schweit’s book is a piercing look inside that work… a haunting account of what it takes to give victims’ families something more important than closure-to give them answers."