Dead Reckoning: The New Science of Catching Killers

Michael Baden and Marion Roach

Simon & Schuster, £25.00

ISBN 0 684 86758 3

Rating: ****

As with sex and psychology, we all know something about death. Michael Baden and Marion Roach are expert forensic pathologists. In this enthralling book, they share their expertise and fascination with the cause and mode of death. Used to being an expert witness, Baden has mastered the art of expressing his science passionately and in easy to understand terms, without patronising the reader.

The authors revel in the gruesome and grotesque subspecialties of forensic pathology. The reader is invited to the blood school where practising crime investigators go to learn about the ballistics of blood splatter. The course includes esoteric experiments where participants find themselves blowing mouthfuls of blood at each other to demonstrate what evidence may result. If you are squeamish, you may have your stomach turned by a weekend trip to a leading forensic entomologist's ranch, where pigs are slaughtered and are later re-examined for evidence of insect activity: this helps to estimate the time since death of a corpse. As a source of many clues, heads warrant a chapter of their very own. The skull may be subject to facial reconstruction and dental histories can lead to identification of the deceased. DNA and evidence of drug use or poisoning can be extracted from hairs from the scalp.

High profile cases are recounted, but while the OJ Simpson trial is one that most people are familiar with, other cases may not have penetrated the consciousness of non-American readers to the same extent. All of these stories are told with zeal, but also with an underlying gravity. The authors take the scientific processes of collecting and preserving evidence seriously: experience tells them that any evidence may turn out to be essential in the examination of an unnatural death. Vitally, the investigator seeks the truth—regardless of whether he has been employed by the prosecution or defence for a case.

Baden and Roach take a potentially interesting subject and make it fascinating and highly readable. The fields studied in the search of truth—and subsequently justice—are broad and continue to evolve. I wonder what form of evidence will be found in next? Baden and Roach are surely qualified to tell us.