Author: Val McDermid
ISBN No: 9781847659903
Review date: 02/05/2024
No of pages:
Publisher: Profile Books
Publisher URL:
http://www.profilebooks.com/isbn/9781847659903/
Year of publication: 06/10/2014
Brief:
Val McDermid crime thriller writer, and author of Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime
price
£12, ebook
Val McDermid the crime thriller writer has turned her hand to fact. As she writes in the conclusion to Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime: “This book has charted the astonishing leaps that forensic science has made over the past 200 years.” As she then points out, advances in science have run hand in hand with advance in the delivery of justice.
But the subject is too varied and above all human, and Val McDermid is too able a writer to talk in such dry terms as science and justice. She dives into detail, such as the forged will that matches the typewriter in the mass killer Dr Harold Shipman’s surgery. As McDermid shows, forensic science is about problem-solving, and caring about cases worked on. The scientists confront the dark and frightening sides of human behaviour. She does well to bring out that progress in the field; the forensic tools of the last 200 years made available to crime investigators are, she writes, ‘nothing short of astounding’.
She covers well-known crimes such as the Jack the Ripper murders; the Shipman killings; and fires, missing persons and terrorist bombings. While it’s a well-worn phrase, as Val McDermid says, ‘truth is stranger than fiction’.
If you like blood spatter, facial reconstruction of the bludgeoned and bloodied dead, pathology and toxicology, there are chapters in this book for you. And let us admit that we do like it, or at least want to learn about it; I recall the invitation to the forensic science labs near Birmingham that Professional Security took up some years ago, and visitors including very senior police lapped up and were genuinely interested in what was shown; how forensic science can catch a criminal from the smallest trace of DNA or other clue.
The book is published in association with the Wellcome Collection – visit wellcomecollection.org. Briefly, it’s a free visitor destination that explores the connections between medicine, life and art.
