Dollhouse Murders

Growing up, The Dollhouse Murders was one of my favorite novels. If you missed it, it was the story of a dollhouse that mysteriously acted out murders. That was fiction, but it turns out that a woman named Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962) actually built 18 minature crime scene dioramas for student analysis.

Though barred from attending medical school because she was a woman, Lee dedicated her life to the science of crime detection. Combine that with a love of dollhouses, and voila.

The dioramas are collected in the book, The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Maybe I'm a little morbid, but this sounds really cool.

Via Apartment Therapy.