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Written in Blood Series
Written in Blood: Detectives and Detection
From the invention of the microscope to the first undercover cop, the author chronicles the criminals and the lawmen who have used their instincts, their cunning, and the advances in the science of criminal detection to bring the guilty to justice.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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About the author
Colin Wilson
430 books1,289 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.
Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.
Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.
Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 5, 2022
An interesting read, although as usual with Colin Wilson there are some mistakes. I think as a criminologist he tends to use other (sometimes unreliable) writers as his sources rather than doing his own research. Mr Wilson was one of the people taken in by the ludicrous Diary of Jack the Ripper.
The book is still an enjoyable read.
The book is still an enjoyable read.
February 17, 2016
pg 50
Before scientific detective methods, torture was the way to find out guilt. And suspicion meant a guilty verdict the same way a witch was a witch once accused, because the confessions would come once the thumbscrews were applied, or the person in custody had successive 50 lb weights piled atop them in interrogation.
pg 65
"Moving on to the birth of fingerprinting. And the criminal / informant / head of a French police group Eugène François Vidocq. Famous for his escapes, he would gather information on his fellow criminals and escape from prison or on his way to jail, while those who actually went away didn't suspect him, until eventually they ended up on the block, where he treated them kindly in their last days."
pg 92.
The use of measurements of several different parts of the body to file away criminals characteristics, to try to catch habitual criminals who use false names, as they come back through the system, known as bertillonage. Scientifically known as Anthropometry, "measurement of man," introduced by Alphonse Bertillon in France in 1883. The first fingerprint murder case solved, by men who had just heard by chance of them.
Before scientific detective methods, torture was the way to find out guilt. And suspicion meant a guilty verdict the same way a witch was a witch once accused, because the confessions would come once the thumbscrews were applied, or the person in custody had successive 50 lb weights piled atop them in interrogation.
pg 65
"Moving on to the birth of fingerprinting. And the criminal / informant / head of a French police group Eugène François Vidocq. Famous for his escapes, he would gather information on his fellow criminals and escape from prison or on his way to jail, while those who actually went away didn't suspect him, until eventually they ended up on the block, where he treated them kindly in their last days."
pg 92.
The use of measurements of several different parts of the body to file away criminals characteristics, to try to catch habitual criminals who use false names, as they come back through the system, known as bertillonage. Scientifically known as Anthropometry, "measurement of man," introduced by Alphonse Bertillon in France in 1883. The first fingerprint murder case solved, by men who had just heard by chance of them.
January 23, 2016
A good read. Interesting stories well told.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews