Bloodstains and Ball Gowns: My Life as a Crime Scene Cleaner

Donna Nayler's nonfiction true-crime memoir, Bloodstains and Ball Gowns: My Life as a Crime Scene Cleaner, is a well-written and fact-based collection of the author's experiences as a crime scene cleaner. I was impressed by the author's ability to get past the gore and occasional squalor and retain some measure of compassion for those lives which were abruptly cut short or that dwindled away with no one there to notice. While Nayler gives the reader a full account of the kinds of tasks a crime scene cleaner must perform, the reader can't help but feel the author's pain, especially when she was relating working on crime scenes where domestic violence ended in brutal and bloody death. Her story is compelling and often fascinating, and while I'd not recommend reading it while eating, it's bound to answer lots of questions about that most unusual profession. Bloodstains and Ball Gowns: My Life as a Crime Scene Cleaner is recommended reading

Without revealing private details about the clients she has worked for, Donna Nayler shares her intimate journey in the exclusive world of crime scene cleaning with detail and depth. Donna's story goes beyond the crime scenes and the victims. It is a story of her personal journey and the lasting impact the different jobs left on her life. From the crime scenes, she learned details about the victims' lives and those details often had her reflecting on her own life. The lessons she learned from these jobs are invaluable. To Donna, her job in the dark world of violent deaths and messy crime scenes is not a mere meal ticket, but rather a way to give those left behind a chance to move on with life.

Nayler states that she speaks for the dead and for what the dead have left behind. Anyone who reads Bloodstains and Ball Gowns is sure to agree. Unfortunately, what becomes very evident from Nayler’s story is that the dead leave behind more often than not shattered families, feuding relatives and greedy hangers-on, hoping to cash in on the ill-fortune of the deceased. What was particularly interesting about Nayler’s book was that so much could be gleaned about the deceased and the way they lived and died just by stepping inside the front door of their home. Let’s face it, toxic gases and foul smells aplenty are not for the weak of stomach, and being a crime scene cleaner certainly isn’t a calling for most, but thanks to the author’s frank honesty in Bloodstains and Ball Gowns, we readers have front row seats in the splatter zone, so to speak – the closest most of us will ever get to a real life crime scene, thank God!

I have to take my hat off to Donna Nayler for providing such an insightful look into a world where I have never dared to venture. Watching it on television is one thing, but to read the true stories of clean-ups and picture the amount of blood (and other bodily fluids) at a crime scene, described by how many cups it would fill, really is stomach-turning. Bloodstains and Ball Gowns: My Life as a Crime Scene Cleaner is extremely well-written and provides an in-depth, bird's-eye view of what goes on behind the scenes in a clean-up, sans detective work (which is the job of the police). I was pleasantly surprised by Bloodstains and Ball Gowns: My Life as a Crime Scene Cleaner, and recommend it to mature readers who are interested in what goes on behind the scenes during a crime scene clean-up.