Forensics Quotes

“We make high demands on the people we expect to deliver justice, and we don’t always appreciate how much it eats away at them.”
― Val McDermid, Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime

“No two bodies will decompose in the same way, and at the same rate. You can have two bodies that are literally six feet apart and they will decompose in entirely different manners. It could be the amount of fat on the body. It could be the drugs they were taking, or the medication. It could be the type of clothing they’re wearing. It could be that one has a particular odour that is more attractive to flies than the other. Absolutely anything.”
― Val McDermid, Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime

“The discipline is based on one grisly fact: a corpse makes a good lunch.”
― Val McDermid, Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime

“We see some of the worst things that mankind can do to each other and I still get shocked by some of the things that occur. Most people can go home and talk to their families about what they’ve done at work. We can’t. But even if I could, I don’t want my family to know some of the things that I’ve seen.”
― Val McDermid, Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime

“Without science, there would be no you;
without you, the future would offer a much narrower prospect.”
― Val McDermid, Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime

“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind’.”
― Val McDermid, Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime

“As with arsenical candles and papers and fabrics, items become established in commerce before their dangers are recognized, ensuring that any attempt to curtail their use will be resisted by manufacturers … and fought or ignored by politicians ideologically opposed to government interference …’ Gettler’s”
― Val McDermid, Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime

“To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness; let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death.’ Michel de Montaigne, Essais (1580)”
― Val McDermid, Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime

“macerating what was left of the organs, ‘liver, a portion of the heart, a certain”
― Val McDermid, Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime

“proportion than she”
― Val McDermid, Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime

“Within the infant rind of this weak flower Poison hath residence and medicine power’ Romeo and Juliet, II, iii”
― Val McDermid, Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime