Categories: True Crime Biographies True Crime Books Crime Crime Fiction Society & Social Sciences Forensic Science Forensic Medicine


Forensics : The Anatomy of Crime
4.08 (9,501 ratings by Goodreads)
Paperback English
By (author) Val McDermid


The dead talk. To the right listener, they tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died - and who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help justice to be done using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene or the faintest of human traces.

Forensics draws on interviews with top-level professionals, ground-breaking research and Val McDermids own experience to lay bare the secrets of this fascinating science. And, along the way, she wonders at how maggots collected from a corpse can help determine time of death, how a DNA trace a millionth the size of a grain of salt can be used to convict a killer and how a team of young Argentine scientists led by a maverick American anthropologist uncovered the victims of a genocide.

In her novels, McDermid has been solving complex crimes and confronting unimaginable evil for years. Now, shes looking at the people who do it for real. Its a journey that will take her to war zones, fire scenes and autopsy suites, and bring her into contact with extraordinary bravery and wickedness, as she traces the history of forensics from its earliest beginnings to the cutting-edge science of the modern day.


Product details

Format Paperback | 336 pages
Dimensions 126 x 194 x 22mm | 272g
Publication date 05 Feb 2015
Publisher Profile Books Ltd
Imprint Wellcome Collection
Publication City/Country London, United Kingdom
Language English
Edition Statement Main
Illustrations note w. b&w photos
ISBN13 9781781251706
Bestsellers rank 33,146