Customer Reviews

Casebook Of Forensic Detection

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is the perfect starter book for anyone interested in forensics. It is organized by forensic discipline, then chronologically within each section. The author covers a number of famous cases, but has also included many more that are obscure, but equally fascinating. Each case is described ecomonically, but there is enough detail given to fully describe the case and the forensic techniques used to solve it. The writing is plain, precise, and jargon-free.

This book is also an excellent reference volume. The index and table of contents make it easy to find a specific case and I refer to this book often while reading other true crime or forensics book for names, dates, etc.

Anyone looking for a well-written, informative forensic science book need go no further than this book.

Overall not a bad read. Not a lot of suspense or who dunnit factor. I was especially disappointed with his treatment of the Steven Truscott case. He supported two pieces of since discounted "forensic " evidence used at the original trial. Mr. Truscott was recently acquitted of Lynn Harper's murder by an appeal court in Ontario.

This is an ideal book for a student of forensic science or law, who may need help to find out various cases for their studies. It gives a guide to many different cases throughout the last century, with enough detail for the student to be able to do further research.

Each new section has a brief review of what the subject matter is eg Ballistics. Colin tells a little of what ballistics is about, including some history, then he writes a little about the subject of firearms and then what can happen when firearms are fired. Other subjects covered are Cause of Death, Disputed Documents, DNA Typing, Explosives and Fire, Fingerprinting, Forensic Anthropology, Odontology, Psychological Profiling, Identification of Remains, Serology, Time of Death, Toxicology, Trace Evidence and Voiceprints.

The appendix in the book is on Forensic Pioneers and Their Cases and here Colin lists 9 forensic scientists giving their year of birth and if dead, their year of death, also a brief outline of their career or some other pertinent detail, with a list of the significant cases which they worked on.

This book is well written and with enough detail to give those who are not involved in this field a very enjoyable read.

The book was somewhat well-written, and parts were certainly enjoyable, but there is nothing that you can find here that you cannot find in greater detail and with more useful information somewhere else. The case notes were frequently short enough that you would have no real interest in the case, and it read more like a How-To book for someone interested in writing a medico-legal thriller, as long as the person writing that just wanted a lot of really general information without actually knowing enough of what they are talking about. If you really want a good general interest forensics book, check out What The Corpse Revealed by Hugh Miller. In short, the book had a lot of information in it, but none of it was unavailable or more useful here than other sources.

The "case studies" in this book read like a Jr. High essay - they lack substance and information and have nothing to keep the attention of the reader.

Each case is laid out in the same format - where the guilty are indicated immediately (often with negative adjectives describing them), it is stated that (fill in the blank) technology was used (without any real scientific explanation of the technology), and then it is stated that the guilty was caught due to the science (which was never described).

If all you want to know about forensic science is case names and dates, you might like this book. If you would actually like to learn about the processes used and how the technology works, you may be more than a little disappointed.

I was dissappointed in this book because the facts of each case were layed out without any suspense or mystery. Because of the layout of the book, you start each story knowing who the killer is and what forensic technique was used to solve the crime. Once you know those details, the only thing you find out by reading the story is who was killed, how, and why. You find out those details at the beginning of the story rather than discovering them through the evidence that the forensic scientists uncover. The book is layed out in the style of a reference book. It's easy to find a given article if you know the basic facts of the case. However, this layout makes for less interesting reading.

On the positive side, Evans chose some fascinating cases for his book. All of the cases involve either an interesting crime, interesting forensic techniques, or both. If you love everything to do with forensics and have never watched a show or read a book about forensics that you didn't like, I'm sure you'd like this book. On the other hand, if you're looking for a book that's done in the style of Law and Order (you learn the facts as the investigators uncover them), you should look somewhere else.

This books shows Forensics being used, not just the this is how you do it, but here it is in practice. It is a good and very easy to read book with superb array of graphics and photos to help provide understanding of the fundamentals of forensics.

A must for any True Crime Buff (and CSI fan)

I just recently finished reading this excellent novel about science. I loved this book. If I could reccommend this book to a student in the highschool I would. This book is great for teenagers on up who are interested on learning about forensic sciences.

Overall this was a very interesting book, although only a page or two was devoted to each case you still feel as if you got the whole picture. The author did go into a little too much detail on some of the more violent crimes though.

I've loaned this book out to a few different people and it has proven to be quite popular with everyone. Right now it's overseas, some of my visiting relatives couldn't stop reading it and asked to borrow it. From what I understand, it is still there circulating through more relatives and friends.

As someone who finds forensic science interesting, I found this book to be entertaining. Unfortunately, some of the stories I already knew about from watching forensic science shows such as "The New Detectives". This was probably the main drawback for me. Otherwise, many of the stories were quite interesting. If you're a student of forensic science, I think you will enjoy this book. Hopefully, the case studies will be new material for you.