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CRIME SCENE
by Larry Ragle
Avon, January 2002
411 pages
$7.50
ISBN: 1380773791


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

This heavy duty book should really be titled "So, you Want to Be a Forensic Scientist?" It's a detailed, and I mean, detailed, discussion of every aspect of crime scene investigation as it really is, not like it is on CSI. The author, a former Director of Forensic Sciences in Orange County, California, has an encyclopedic knowledge of his craft.Ý

It's not a book to be read all at once, and alas, to write a review, I sort of had to do that. This is a definite reference book, for avid amateurs and probably for any writer who is writing a mystery with detailed crime scenes in it. Ragle discusses dozens of things, from blood spatter, to how to take foot impressions in snow, from how one recovers latents to DNA, from photographing items in a white sink to proper search techniques. Is it a surprise that after about five pages on the ways bullets leave a gun my eyes glazed over?

But as I say, that's from reading it all at once. I'm sure that's not how this book was intended to be used. There are some photos I had to go past very quickly (I am extremely squeamish) and I did actually skip some descriptions. Ragle uses a few (not enough) examples of cases and some delightful and not out-of-place humor to lighten things up very occasionally. I do very much which he'd explained about the forged fingerprint, though, and skipped a few gruesome photos.

If you are planning a series with a cop, or expect to write a believable scene where your CSI team searches a room, if you love CSI and its offshoots, you'll want to own this book, to check out luminol and lasers, the twelve steps in DNA profiling, detailed descriptions of what autopsies tell you, liver temperatures and what fresh blood looks like. Don't pick it up for a casual read and be careful if you're squeamish. It's a dandy useful book, I'm sure. But now, I need to read a cuddly bunny book, if you'll excuse me.

Note: This is a reprint of a book originally published in 1995

Reviewed by Andi Shechter, August 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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