More Wordcrime: Solving Crime With Linguistics

by John Olsson

Murders, cover-ups, infidelities, financial and political Dr. John Olsson has seen it all in his decades as one of the world's top forensic linguists specialising in authorship.

Working on cases that range from accusations of genocide to domestic disputes gone bad to allegations of university plagiarism, Olsson turns the same tools to the task – the power, depth and precision of forensic linguistics. Grammatical curiosities, lexical quirks, typographic stylings and patterns of use can all give away even the most hard-bitten and careful of criminals. And Olsson doesn't stop there. From the giveaway compound nouns of heavy-handed police statements to the startling similarities displayed in what should be individual office accounts, officials in high places are given a run for their money too. Wordcrime is easy to commit – and hard to escape. More Wordcrime features a series of gripping cases involving murder, sexual assault, hate mail, suspicious death and criminal damage. In approachable and clear prose, Dr Olsson details how forensic linguistics helps the law beat criminals, and how even those in power can be held to account.

This is fascinating reading for anyone interested in true crime, in modern, cutting-edge criminology and also where the study of language meets the law.

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction

280 pages, Paperback

Published August 23, 2018

About the author

Dr. John Olsson was an internationally recognized forensic linguist whose work led him to give evidence in court rooms around the world, including in the USA, Australia, Canada and Singapore, in addition to courts in the UK. His main specialty was the authorship of anonymous documents, such as hoax letters, product contamination threats and kidnap and other ransom demands. In addition, he was an expert in linguistic aspects of code-breaking. He worked on every major type of crime from murder to terrorism, assault of all types, fraud and forgery, narcotics distribution, organized crime and kidnap and other forms of extortion.

Reviews

[Nick Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though interesting in places, this was substantially less concerned with 'crime' than the preceding book by the same author (which I recently read) and as a consequence was substantially less impactful. Here it appears that Olsson, though of course a knowledgeable and respected linguist, was discussing left-over (or 'left out') cases which didn't make it into the first book. I was also left with the impression that Olsson was more opinionated and cantankerous than previously.

The opening three or four chapters didn't get this book off to a good start with me as a reader - they seemed more concerned with the author putting across political points he found important, which had very little to do with forensic linguistics and hence (regardless of whether or not he was right in what he was saying) this felt a very different book from the tighter and more meaty 'Wordcrime: Solving Crime Through Forensic Linguistics', which almost exclusively dealt with criminal and civil cases. The remainder of the book improved, but did seem to be inconsistent in the length of chapters - giving the impression that some parts were afterthoughts and some parts were "..I did a lot of work on this, and I'm going to include everything as a consequence.." in nature.

However, for all this criticism, I did find much of it very interesting and authoritative, and would recommend both books in the series be read if you have the chance.

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good at the first one - the author has become very interested in politics, and uses this opportunity to make many ethical and political points that aren’t really relevant to the narrative. Still, who am I kidding? As soon as ‘Yet More Wordcrime’ comes out I’ll read it straight away.