cover image What the Corpse Revealed: Murder and the Science of Forensic Detection

What the Corpse Revealed: Murder and the Science of Forensic Detection

Hugh Miller, Miller. St. Martin's Press, $23.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-312-20546-1

Miller, a British writer on forensic science, has put together a highly informative collection of true-life criminal cases solved chiefly through the efforts of forensic experts. There is not a dull case among the 16, and some of them, with their airtight alibis, red herrings and maddening paradoxes, are pure Agatha Christie. An American engineer in Buenos Aires, who conceals his secret life as an obsessive gambler and philanderer, dies in his home of carbon monoxide poisoning, though no CO-producing source is evident. A house maid in the Hamptons rubs out her employers--a millionaire barbecue manufacturer and his wife--in revenge for her brother's accidental death, using bullets made of pork that fragment and dissolve into her victims' bodies. Miller, a British master of the forensic procedural, deftly interweaves just enough detail on DNA analysis, chemistry, ballistics and other tricks of the trade for readers to come away with a keen appreciation of the uncanny, scientifically grounded sleuthing of forensic investigators who prove that where there's a crime, there's a clue. International in scope, this highly entertaining compendium hops from the murder of a Yorkshire constable's unfaithful wife to the arson of an L.A. retirement home for silent-film performers to cases from Spain, Italy and Hungary. Miller is a wry observer of the vagaries of justice and family psychodynamics, the thirst for redress and even vengeance. Photos. (June)