Homicide: The View from Inside the Yellow Tape by Cloyd Steiger is an enlightening view into the case files of a retired homicide detective in Seattle. The cases in this book are interesting and reveal how tirelessly a good detective will work to find the answers to solve a murder. It takes a special type of person to be able to get up each day and face the worst that society offers. It is a bit shocking to read true crime accounts of people who take an innocent life with no remorse and many times no good reason. The continual hours with little or no rest this detective put into each new case was staggering.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

WOW! Sit down with a big old water and be prepared to delve deep into the workings of a Homicide Detective. This book blew me away with the investigations, the interrogations, and the ways in which the detective would go about solving the case.
There was a lot of cases covered and I appreciated the unique insight.
The only thing that could have made this book better would have been to have more personal information known about the detective...did any case haunt him? What cases frustrated him the most? Was there any issues with other police departments.
Also more about how his wife and kids thought of his career.
OVerall, the author did a great job writing the book and it was a hard book to put down.

I gave this book a 4 star review. It is a very interesting book from a retired Seattle Homicide Detective Cloyd Steiger. Steiger has a very dry sense of humor, that didn't have any impact for me upon reading this book.
His writing style was great and very efficient, being a man who is a straight shooter and doesn't play games.
He has seen so many homicide's in the twenty years that he was on the force, he seems to have been involved in a lot of cases.
The Death of a firefighter at a Chinese food warehouse fire, the police officer murdered by Christopher Montfort, the gypsy murders, and so many more..

Reading about all these behind the yellow tape stories is very realistic and opens your eyes to so much. We don't realize what really goes on behind the scenes, and how much it affects the officers that have to witness such acts..

What an interesting, and insightful read. Fascinating stuff with a touch of old cop and humour. recommended

I usually love true crime, but this one disappointed me. I really could not get into it. Just the writing style wasn't to my liking.

True crime is another genre I love to read and it's good to read a memoir from someone who's actually on the front line and in the streets chasing down the people responsible for the myriad of crimes we see in the world.

Cloyd Steiger is a former Homicide Detective who worked in Seattle and this is his story, he tells us about some of the cases he worked on from arriving at the crime scene to the arrest and prosecution of the suspect, it's fascinating to read and gives you a better insight into what their jobs entail and how each case effects them when they're not 'on the job'.

I would've liked to hear more about him off the job and if/how he managed to keep the job separate from his home life as I think that is an important part of a memoir of this type. I did still enjoy it though, it kept me engaged and interested throughout.

*Huge thanks to Cloyd Steiger, BooksGoSocial and NetGalley for this copy which I chose to read and all opinions are my own*

I loved this book! It was written by retired Seattle homicide detective Cloyd Steiger. In this book, he talks about many of the high profile cases in Seattle that he was involved in. It was fascinating to hear the behind the scenes details (so to speak). Many of the cases I had heard of but some I had not. I love reading these kinds of books and getting the detectives point of view on what was happening. I thought that the book was well-written and hard to put down. I wanted to know about the next case, then the next, and so on. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes to read about crime stories, especially from the detectives.

Great and engaging stories about police cases that the author encountered. A few grapic pictures, but the pictures to me, shows the brutality one person will do against another. Very well written and holds your interest from page one. A must read for any true crime/or police work fan. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book. Although I received the book in this manner, it did not affect my opinion of this book nor my review.

Reads like a chronology of Mr. Steiger's career as homicide detective, from one death to another. Doesn't go into exploring whys and hows or even the race / class/ economic background of criminals or victims, but gives the nuts and bolts of what happened and who got caught for it and how much he / she got charged for it.

May be of interest to budding officers, not so much students of criminology. Makes Mr. Steiger come across as a Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry (he goes in, gives a quotable quote, comes out).

I hope the final version removes the many typos / spelling errors.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

I found this really interesting and enjoyed the jumping around from case to case, which is very unusual for me. The main character told the story and kept you hooked without being overly likeable.

I found it was difficult to get back into the book once I had put it down which meant I started it four or five times before managing to read it all the way through. So make sure you have time to read it all in one go.

Only reason it isn't five stars is that I wouldn't rush to read it again, which isn't a big negative.

This is a riveting and exceptionally competent account. Homicide detective work is one of the most fictionalized professions on the planet, and this book provided me with a very effective antidote to my assumptions. It is also a deeply moving account of staidfastness in the face of brutality. Bravo.

A look at a Seattle Police homicide detective's amazing career. Steiger seems to have been involved with every significant murder investigation in the past twenty years. The death of firefighters at the Chinese Food warehouse fire, the Cafe Racer murders, the police officer murder by Christopher Montfort, the Gypsy murders, the author was at all of them. Plus many, many more.
Steiger relates the murders in a manner that I recognized from growing up in a law enforcement family myself. Playing down the emotions, giving the facts, sometimes adding in a little gallows humor. It felt like he was talking to me personally, sitting at a bar having a beer.
For those of you who are really into the "CSI" stuff, Steiger includes some of that. He explains about Inquiry Judges, the signs of strangulation, and blood splatter patterns, to name a few.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. And I tip my hat to the service of Officer Steiger. In my own law enforcement career, I have been involved in a few murder investigations. They still haunt me. I pray that the author finds peace and happiness in his retirement.
If you are interested in the criminal history of Seattle, you cannot go wrong with this book!

"Homicide: The View from Inside the Yellow Tape" is a surprisingly interesting book from retired Seattle homicide detective Cloyd Steiger. His writing style is very efficient and sparse, befitting a man who is a straight shooter with no time for games. It took me a while to get into this book because at first it appears to be basically a brief description of various homicide cases, but as the book progresses, you see the man behind the Detective - a man who cares deeply about justice and bringing families a resolution to what is often the worst day of their lives. Also, Steiger has a very dry sense of humor -- in discovering a body at a construction site: "I noticed right away: He was dressed in a Batman suit (I'm a trained observer.") 4 stars.

I found this to be a very interesting look at homicide work. Some details were a bit gritty and others were a bit over-the-top. I presume reality is somewhere in the middle. I received a copy from NetGalley and the publisher and this is my honest opinion.

The dedication of this book drew me in: "To the secondary victims of homicide; the loved ones left behind." That sentence gave me a glimpse of the man who wrote this book. A lot of men and woman who have worked in Homicide and in smaller agencies for that length of time don't have a lot of compassion left. They have suffered from personal issues; divorce and addiction, plus much worse. When you are faced with evil every day it starts to erode your very core.
I've worked with men like Steiger who would buck the bureaucratic BS to get his job done, they always had the highest clearance rate. Their supervisors finally learned that this man knows what he's doing, we'll leave him alone and for the most part they did. He had to carry a full load of several cases but he was the first in line to help his fellow detectives who caught a big whodunit.
There is another reason I personally liked his book, it's the timeline of this career in homicide. They didn't have all these special forensic teams, cell phones and it wasn't anything like it is portrayed on television. When you get called out in the middle of the night, standing in the pouring rain with your cup of Seven-11 coffee with a young dead man sprawled out in the middle of the road in front of several apartment complexes, you know someone saw something. There was no way they couldn't have. Steiger was the type that would flush his witnesses out, that's what you had to then and it was hard because of the street adage: " Snitches will need Stitches.' This book will show you how much law enforcement has evolved since then, the detectives had their gut instincts and for the most part, criminals aren't the smartest book on the shelf.
Mr. Steiger was what is called a Cop's cop meaning that he was well respected by his peers and he was an excellent mentor. He held his marriage down and his sons have followed in his footsteps and are also working for SPD. He's not doing a reality tv show he's still investigating cold cases since his retirement. I think that it's safe to say when you join the police force and you don't want to rank, all you want to do is solve murders than it's a true calling.

Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of the galley from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. The opinions I expressed above are my own.

First, I was given this book by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review. I love True Crime books, and this one stood out an a straight forward account of some of a Seattle homicide detective's cases. The stories are told without enlistment of what was going on in victims and perpetrators lives. We are not given what might have been happening or what the person might have been thinking. These are as Joe Friday would say, "just the facts". It seems to be a true glimpse into the life of a homicide cop who has to balance home with work. It shows how the job has to take precedent over family at times, even when it inconvenient. An officer with family members who are also on the force, and how death effects life. There are tales of deaths of fellow officers, of children, of innocent victims, of troubled people and the effect it has on the citizen. If you are looking for a long winded tale that delves into a long drawn out explanation of every move a criminal or victim makes leading up to the incident, this is not the book for you. If you want an unvarnished account reminiscent of old style detective stories, then this book is for you. I truly enjoyed this book as a break from new crime books that sometimes dwell too much the psychology behind the crime that the horror of a crime loses its impact. Review was posted to Good Reads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Facebook.

Great and engaging stories about police cases that the author encountered. A few grapic pictures, but the pictures to me, shows the brutality one person will do against another. Very well written and holds your interest from page one. A must read for any true crime/or police work fan. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book. Although I received the book in this manner, it did not affect my opinion of this book nor my review.

Homicide: The View from Inside the Yellow Tape by Cloyd Steiger is a vey interesting book about certain homicides that took place in Washington during Steiger time as a Detective. As citizens we usually are not privy to certain information that the police deal with unless it is on the news usually. I love true crime so I am probably going to be more biased in that I can handle more of the blood and gore than some others that read this book. It is told in a very professional way and actually had me researching some of them just because of the background. Some were funny and some pretty bad but I rally like how Steiger kept his personal feelings to a minimum so that the reader could come to their own conclusion. I certainly enjoyed reading this novel and if you like true crime I urge you to give it a read.

Thank you to netgalley as well as the author for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.


5 stars ⭐️ out of 5

Received this book as an ARC for my honest review.

All in all the book was good. It read more like a journal than a book and there were a quite a few weird errors/things that I had a hard time with. Just some inconsistencies and then some wrong word choices like there vs their. The book just kinda ended blah too, no real look backs, summaries or anything.

Less a memoir, more a series of (often cheesy, always brutal) anecdotes about 37 years on the force.