It was never my intention to become an expert on the Jonbenet Ramsey case, but given my complete and total absorption in the two books most recently read (following the colon), I must say I'm pretty much up to snuff on all the players, suspects and victim: Jonbenet by Detective Steve Thomas; Perfect Murder, Perfect Town by Lawrence Schiller.

Let there be no mistake that Steve Thomas has a grudge he's working on. He believes with the passion of a police officer that Patsy Ramsey killed Jonbenet, and he also believes the Boulder's DA office totally screwed up. Anyone watching even a news snippet during the Jonbenet brouhaha probably knew this. It wasn't any big secret that the Boulder DA in the form of Alex Hunter was working closely with the Ramsey lawyers, one time even arranging an interview in an assistant DA's home. Has anyone ever heard of such a thing? Police don't normally cotton to this kind of stuff and this average citizen can understand why.

The Thomas book was very subjective, to state the obvious. He liked Detective Commander Eller and disliked his replacement, Beckner. He thought Detective Arndt, the first detective to arrive at the crime scene that December 26, 1996 totally mishandled everything, the consequences of which botched the case forever. Surprisingly, Thomas was especially kind to Lou Smit, an investigator hired by the DA's office and proponent of the theory that an intruder to the Ramsey house murdered Jonbenet.

There were a few heretofore unknown scoops (at least unknown by me) in the Jonbenet murder investigation revealed in Thomas book. I had no idea the Boulder police went out and hired their own lawyers to advise them on the investigation. Then again, the DA's office hired their own investigators and neither scenario makes much sense to me. I also had no idea that Alex Hunter had been so cozy with Globe tabloid reporter Jeff Shapiro.

Schiller mentioned this Shapiro fellow in his book quite a bit and as an aside, what a character this guy has to be. Sort of a tabloid Colombo as I like to think of him, he managed to get himself all cozy with both the DA and the police in this case, so much so that Hunter regularly phoned the fellow direct to his cell phone and the Boulder cops even taped a confession by Shapiro that he was in cahoots with the DA's office. Shapiro managed to weasel in all cozy like with some other of the Ramsey witnesses, bumbling along, even joining the Ramsey church at one point, professing to a desire to convert to Christianity. What a hoot! I wonder how all these folks feel now that their rather weird association with a Globe tabloid reporter is known to the world.

The Schiller book was more objective than the Thomas tome. I admired the way the author avoided editorial intrusions while at the same time I was infuriated. I wanted someone to tell me who killed Jonbenet and all Schiller did was delineate the events for the reader to conclude. Schiller effectively used quotes from some odd yet telling sources: friends of Jonbenet, suspects interviewed by the police and Jonbenet's teachers. Schiller wanted to align the politeness of the town with the manner in which the investigation was handled. The effective use of the quotes created the over-view of Boulder, Colorado he was trying to achieve.