The author, a sociologist, spent a year as a participant-observer studying detectives at work in a county sheriff's office. The result is the best writing about criminal investigation this reviewer has read. It stands in direct and favorable contrast to the regrettable study released in 1975 by the Rand Corporation of “The Criminal Investigation Process.” Sanders' work, a major contribution to the literature, is a typical piece of good academic (yet practical) research—the kind that seldom seems to be supported by the federal government. On the other hand, the half-million dollar funding of the Rand Study by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration resulted in a product that charitably can be described as less than memorable.