Wednesday, June 30, 2010

A Book in Review:The Casebook of Forensic Detection

The Casebook of Forensic Detection: How Science Solved 100 of the World's Most Baffling Crimes By: Colin Evans
Non-fiction: science, crime, 355 pages
Book Count: 44

This case deals with the major sciences that are used to solve crimes, especially murder cases. It is divided into the major disciplines used: Ballistics, DNA typing, Psychological Profiling, Toxicology, etc. Each part starts out with a bit of info on the history and use of each science, and then list a number of cases that were solved with it starting with the earliest cases and following a chronological order. It deals with many well known cases like Sacco and Vanzetti, the Romanovs, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, the Limburg kidnapping, and the case "Fargo" was based off of. In a couple of the cases where the the court's ruling is in dispute it will point out how with the scientific evidence the jury was given it only made since that they found the defendant guilty. There is one thing that I don't like about how they set the book up. With the exclusion of three cases all cases are labeled by the guilty party's name(s). (One was investigated around 100 years after the death, one was not concern with the crime as much as identifying a family, and one was about the forged documents more then the forger.) With some of the well knows case it's logical, but I would like if it was labeled differently for the most ones, so as I read the info I don't already know who the guilty party was.

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