Police Lab: How Forensic Science Tracks Down and Convicts Criminals »

David Owen is the author of Hidden Evidence and Hidden Secrets. He has written extensively on military deception, espionage, and written and produced television documentaries on computer crime and electronic intelligence.

An overview of forensic science for young adult readers that includes case studies of actual crimes

School Library Journal

Gr 6-8-What with CSI one of the more popular shows around, forensic-science methods have made an entrance into many living rooms around the country, and there has been corresponding activity in the previously placid 363.25s. This addition to the genre discusses current methodology interspersed with actual forensic investigations into crimes as diverse as a brutal murder in 1889 to the causes of the gun turret explosion on the USS Iowa in 1989. Poison, strangulation, burning, drowning, shooting, and stabbing are some of the murderous methods explored in the readable text, as are such forensic tools as facial reconstruction, bite matching, ballistics, DNA screening, and the old standby, fingerprinting. Color photos abound, as do "Forensic Fact" and "Crime File" boxes. This title is on a comparable level with Andrea Campbell's more stolid Forensic Science (Chelsea, 1999) and Brian Lane's Crime & Detection (DK, 2000), and more difficult than Charlotte Foltz Jones's chattier Fingerprints and Talking Bones (Delacorte, 1997). Couple Owen's book with Mark P. Friedlander, Jr., and Terry M. Phillips's competent When Objects Talk (Lerner, 2001) and Donna M. Jackson's superb The Bone Detectives (Little, Brown, 1996) and put CSI on TiVo.-Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Foreword

Introduction: The Origins of Forensic Science

Chapter 1: The Crime Files Opens

Crime File: Justice Bites Back: Ted Bundy

Chapter 2: Positive ID

Crime File: The Ruxton Body Bags: Buck Ruxton

Chapter 3: Pure Poison

Crime File: Caroline Grills: Aunt Thally's poisoned tea

Crime File: Georgi Markov and the poisonous pellet

Chapter 4: The Cut of a Knife; the Blow of a Hammer

Crime File: Jeffrey MacDonald and the ice pick

Chapter 5: Starved of Air: Strangulation and Suffocation

Crime File: A Trunk Full of Clues: Michel Eyraud & Gabrielle Bompard

Chapter 6: Fire and Water: Death by Burning and Drowning

Crime File: Robert Maxwell afloat

Chapter 7: The Smoking Gun

Crime File: The Kennedy Investigation: one marksman or two?

Crime File: The tragic turret on USS Iowa

Chapter 8: The Flames of Destruction: Fire and Explosives

Crime File: Steven Benson a family destroyed

Crime File: The double tragedies of the World Trade Center

Crime File: Ground Zero: World Trade Center

Chapter 9: Unmasking the Criminals: Frauds and Forgeries

Crime File: The Hitler Diaries

Chapter 10: Criminal Traces

Crime File: High Fiber: Wayne Williams

Crime File: hooded attacker Malcolm Fairley

Chapter 11: Written inBlood

Crime File: The Dingo Baby: Lindy Chamerlain

Crime File: The bloody message of Ghislaine Marchal

Chapter 12: DNA: The Ultimate Identifier?

Crime File: The DNA Link the conviction of Colin Pitchfork

Chapter 13: The Future of Forensic Sciences

Crime File: Richard Ramirez outstalked by a computer

Crime File: O.J. Simpson and the pitfalls of DNA



Glossary

Index

Bibliography and Picture Credits