The Art of Investigation Revisited: Practical Tips from the Experts

by Chelsea A Binns (Editor), Bruce Sackman (Editor)

The Art of Investigation Practical Tips from the Experts examines the qualities required to be a professional, thorough, and effective investigator is a follow-up to the authors highly touted book The Art of Investigation (2019). This book features a wholly new line-up of investigators, experienced professionals in the field who delve into the “soft skills” that make an investigator effective. Each chapter examines a specific quality required to be a professional, thorough, and―most importantly―successful in this challenging discipline. The editors, and contributing authors, are tops in their field and bring a wealth of real-world knowledge and experience to the subject. While several publications exist on the procedures and steps of an investigation, few books cover the creative and intuitive skills required. Such traits are necessary to continually question in the face of investigative roadblocks, unique qualities endemic to an inquisitive mind that can be trained to improve and investigators professional skill-set. Each chapter discusses the applicability of the traits, and requirements to the contributor’s own work and experience as an investigator. In doing so, the contributors will provide valuable stories from their personal experience which demonstrates their use or a given trait and its importance in the course of their investigative work and career. The case examples included throughout will be engaging and, as is often the case, surprising. An investigator must keep an open mind above all else and this book will seek to “lift the veil” on the inner workings of an investigation and the thought process and inner monologue of an investigator as part of that process. The book will be a welcome addition to any investigators toolkit and will also be of interest to students in criminal justice, security and Homeland Security programs, security consultants, corporate and private security professionals, and the legal community.

190 pages, Hardcover

Published September 13, 2023

About the author

Chelsea Binns is a professor in the Department of Security, Fire & Emergency Management. Chelsea is a fraud expert, with a PhD in Criminal Justice and a Private Investigator license in NY State. She was named named a "top PI" in 2022 by PI Magazine. She also holds the Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) credential.

Her research interests are focused on fraud and related corporate security & investigations matters, including background checks, corporate crime, cybercrime, employee crime, financial crime, fraud hotlines, investigative techniques, organizational fraud and white collar crime.

She has extensive experience in these areas, having previously worked in an investigative capacity for prestigious organizations such as Citibank, Morgan Stanley, New York City’s Department of Investigation (DOI) and the New York State Office of the Attorney General.

Chelsea is a highly sought-after expert in the industry. She has appeared on CBS Channel 2 News in NYC and on Fox 5 News in a segment that aired nationally. Additional media organizations where her work has been featured and/or she has provided expert assistance and commentary, include: Asheville Watchdog, Bloomberg News, Buzz Feed News, DocumentedNY, Forbes, Metro NY, NBC News MACH, Orchard Park Sun, Oxygen/Crime TV, The Daily News, The Washington Times, The New York Times, USA Today and the The Wall Street Journal.

She has published four books to date: The Art of Investigation Revisited: Practical Tips from the Experts, CRC Press (in press, anticipated June 2023), The Art of Investigation, CRC Press (2020), Safety & Security in Hotels and Home Sharing, Springer (2020) and Fraud Hotlines: Design, Performance & Assessment, CRC Press (2017). Her work also appears in peer-reviewed journals, such as Security Journal.

She frequently lectures before elite audiences to include major industry groups, governmental organizations and investigative teams. The ACFE Rhode Island chapter named Chelsea their speaker of the year in 2020. Chelsea has also performed several commissioned studies to date. Her most recent study, funded by the American Society of Industrial Security (ASIS), was "Using Social Media to Gather Security Intelligence."

Reviews

[Judy Ford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book by private investigators for private investigators. I read it because I write detective novels and I thought it would give me some background into how detectives (and their minds) work. The editors are private investigators who specialise in supporting the defence team in criminal cases. I had not previously thought about the way in which the legal system is stacked against defendants, in that the prosecution has all the power of the police to help them gather evidence, while the defence has fewer resources and less authority.

Most of the contributors are living and working in New York State, but there is one from England and one from Japan to give a slightly less parochial view.

Unusually, in a “how to” book, the chapters are arranged so that each describes a particular quality that a detective needs in order to perform well: tenacity, self-control, patience, and so on. Some of the chapters read rather like the answers to those job interview questions, “tell me about a time when you used initiative/discretion/adaptability/empathy/… to achieve your objectives.” This is an interesting way of presenting the material and it makes some of the lessons learned easy to apply to fields other than investigation.

[Amos Dyett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got everything I needed from it and more!