Written in Blood

Extraordinary accounts of forensic crime detection—from poisoners in historic Rome to modern-day serial killers—by the bestselling writer of The Outsider.

 

In 44 BC, a Roman physician named Antistius carried out the primary post-mortem recorded in historical past—on the corpse of homicide sufferer Julius Caesar. Nonetheless, not till the nineteenth century did the systematic utility of scientific data to crime detection critically start, in order that the tiniest scrap of proof would possibly yield astonishing outcomes—like the one horsehair that betrayed the assassin in New York’s 1936 puzzling and sensational Nancy Titterton case.

 

Many such dramatic tales seem on this up to date version of probably the most gripping catalog of crimes by acclaimed criminologist Colin Wilson. The guide follows the progress of forensic science from the primary circumstances of suspected arsenic poisoning proper as much as investigations utilizing a formidable armory of high-tech strategies: ballistic evaluation, blood typing, voice printing, textile evaluation, psychological profiling and genetic fingerprinting.

 

“Colin Wilson has made himself the Thinker-King of forensic hypothesis, the Diderot of the trail labs.” —
The Occasions Literary Complement

 

“Will enthrall connoisseurs of violent crime.” —
The Glasgow Herald