Clues!: A History of Forensic Detection

Clues!
A History of Forensic Detection

by
Colin Wilson

Publisher
Warner Books

Publication Year
1991

Hardcover with dustjacket; 512 pages; illustrated with photos.  Dustjacket has some edgewear and rubbing and a tear on the upper back corner, but overall, this copy is still in excellent shape.

"The body of Nancy Titterton was found by two furniture removal men; she was lying face downward in an empty bath, naked except for a pair of silk stockings, and for the pyjama jacket knotted round her throat..."

So begins this massive and compelling history of forensic crime detection, from poisoners in ancient Rome to modern serial murderers.  The Nancy Titterton case -- a sexual murder which took place in New York in 1936 -- has all the classic simplicity of detective fiction:  the murderer was betrayed by a single horsehair.  The history of forensic detection is in fact a demonstration of how the smallest details can lead to momentuous results.  Time and again it is the tiniest scraps of evidence that yield results, and Colin Wilson recounts some of the most extraordinary of these in often gruesome detail -- such as the Ruxton case of the 1930s in which the dismembered victims of a double murder were reconstructed from an assortment of seventy pieces of bone and decaying flesh found wrapped in bundles in the River Linn.

With his characteristic fluency and enthusiasm, Colin Wilson presents a gripping catalog of crimes, and a grisly panorama of case studies that chart the progress of forensic science from the first attempts at detecting arsenic to today's impressive armory of techniques, such as ballistic analysis, blood typing, voice printing, textile analysis, psychological profiling, and genetic fingerprinting.

The surprisingly modern phenomenon of serial sex crime is covered in depth, the cases include Jack the Ripper, Lucie Berlin, Mary Phagan, the Black Dahlia, the Moors murders, Charles Manson, and Peter Sutcliffe -- the so-called Yorkshire Ripper.  Though sexual crimes are now on the increase, Colin Wilson shows that the odds are increasingly stacked against the sex killer with the introduction of computerized information retrieval and other new techniues.

Packed with detailed case studies from all over the world, and complemented by a generous selection of illustrations, Clues! is both a serious contribution to the literature of scientific crime detection and an absorbing popular history of a subject that fascinates us all.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1) Science of Detection

2) The Power of Poison

3) The Discovery of Fingerprints

4) Whose Body?

5) If Blood Could Speak...

6) Every Bullet has a Fingerprint

7) The Microscope as Detective

8) The Sexual Criminal

9) The Craft of the Manhunter

10) The Soul of the Criminal

Postscript

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