From the Bookshelf of Science and Inquiry…

Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime

Val McDermid

Start date: November 1, 2016

Finish date: November 30, 2016

Discussion: Book Club 2016

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Book Club 2016

* December 2016 - Wizards, Aliens
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last updated Jan 25, 2017 01:23AM

* November 2016 - Neurotribes
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last updated Nov 27, 2016 08:47PM

What Members Thought

Apr 02, 2016 Larry rated it really liked it

A good history of how forensic evidence has been used--mainly in the UK and in the United States--to discover crimes and prosecute those crimes. Even with its emphasis on those two countries, it notes that the first known forensic autopsy was that of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., with 23 stab wounds detected, one of which was fatal. It treats the kind of kind of evidence in separate chapters, entomology, toxicology, fingerprinting, DNA evidence, etc. There is some unevenness across these chapters, b ...more

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May 01, 2022 Paul Perry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, british-author, science, crime, female-author, read-in-2022, scottish-author

Val McDermid is one of the finest crime writers working today, so a book by her delving into forensic science was a must-read. In each chapter she deals respectively with The Crime Scene, Fire Scene Investigation, Entomology, Pathology, Toxicology, Finger Printing, Blood Spatter Analysis and DNA, Anthropology, Facial Reconstruction, Digital Forensics, Forensic Psychology and, finally, how these are presented in the courtroom.

As well as the, as expected, excellent writing, McDermid's research is Val McDermid is one of the finest crime writers working today, so a book by her delving into forensic science was a must-read. In each chapter she deals respectively with The Crime Scene, Fire Scene Investigation, Entomology, Pathology, Toxicology, Finger Printing, Blood Spatter Analysis and DNA, Anthropology, Facial Reconstruction, Digital Forensics, Forensic Psychology and, finally, how these are presented in the courtroom.

As well as the, as expected, excellent writing, McDermid's research is top-notch - again no surprise, she was a well-respected newspaper journalist for many years, and the bibliography is extensive. She speaks with experts across each field and outlines important cases that proved the usefulness of each field of analysis - using old examples like the Great Fire of London in 1666, Jack the Ripper in Victorian Whitechapel, the anatomical studies of Leonardo da Vinci and others - right up the the digital sleuthing that has caught child pornographers.

As that last sentence suggests, some of the book is hard reading due to the brutality of a number of the crimes the author uses as illustrations, the stories of murders and rapes and war crimes. I don't tend to read true crime for precisely this reason, preferring the distance of fiction, but here the information is given, well, forensically rather than salaciously.

McDermid also takes pains to draw attention to the shortcomings of forensic science, something that has gained recognition over the last decade. She uses examples such as the disastrous mishandling of the Rachel Nickell murder on Wimbledon Common in 1992, where the Metropolitan Police ignored evidence due to over-reliance on an "offender profile" that suited a preferred suspect, or the awful miscarriages of justice caused by the wildly inaccurate "expert" testimonies of Roy Meadows. As she points out, the problem with these isn't typically a problem with the science, but with misuse of and over-reliance on it; forensic science should be a guide to investigation and not a replacement for it. Hopefully, lessons learnt from the above blunders make the recurrence all but impossible - in British courts at least - provided guidelines are adhered to.

I switched between the ebook and audio (Kindle whispersync has made me sell my soul to Amazon, I'm afraid), and I must mention the reading. Actress Sarah Barron's reading was extraordinary, measured and struck the perfect note, and her accent work is just superb, doing a range of British and American accents to perfection (although, oddly, the only non-Anglophone I heard her given a national accent was a Polish scientist). The only times the reading jarred were when she gave generic English accents to a couple of people who I knew the voices of, and the choice to give Arthur Conan Doyle a posh, piping English accent instead of his Edinburgh brogue. ...more

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Nov 15, 2016 Charlene rated it liked it

Shelves: general-science

McDermid provided a history of forensics. That premise was fairly interesting. I loved learning about what problems necessitated the development of various techniques. If we think about the justice system around the world from the beginning of recorded history until now, it's clear that developing tech to help humans get better and proving someone's guilt is a good idea. It was extremely common to punish someone who was not the offender. Before the collection of evidence, people could only go on ...more

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Aug 25, 2015 Nicola rated it it was amazing

What a treasure of a book, for anyone interested in crime, criminals, science, technology and law. The book is divided into chapters on such subjects as blood spatter, DNA, digital forensics, anthropology and so on. The history provided by McDermid flows through the book like a trickle of blood that we get to follow. Both each chapter and the whole book lead to a big puddle of news about what's happening now, what's being worked on for the future. I never intended to be a criminal, but this book ...more

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