Alternative Mystery Solutions to American Crime : Volume VI, Issue 2, Summer 2021

This issue includes reviews from the Editor, Anna Faktorovich, and from CCR's regular review contributor, Susie Gharib. Faktorovich's reviews offer alternative solutions to American crime mysteries that have dominated media broadcasts. The review of Trial by Media addresses the question the series proposes regarding if the media can motivate a murderer or be bought by the wealthy to temper with the jury to reach a desired verdict. A study of Operation Varsity Blues addresses the prevalence of academic fraud (plagiarism, paper-buying, cheating, deceit) not only among the richest but as it is perpetrated by the majority of American students and teachers. The analysis of How to Fix a Drug Scandal explores the frauds perpetrated by crime drug lab chemists Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan in Massachusetts. And the review of This Is a Robbery addresses the most likely theory of whodunnit, which is not considered in this documentary, or that two actual police officers worked with all employees in the Gardner Museum during the planned incident and with the two witnesses to create a false-narrative that instead points to amateur thieves, to cocaine smugglers and to pretty much anybody other than those involved.