
Forensics
What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime
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Narrated by:
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Sarah Barron
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By:
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Val McDermid
About this listen
The dead talk - to the right listener. They can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help serve justice using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces. Forensics draws on interviews with some of these top-level professionals, groundbreaking research, and Val McDermid's own original interviews and firsthand experience on scene with top forensic scientists.
Along the way McDermid discovers how maggots collected from a corpse can help determine one's 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 were able to uncover the victims of a genocide. It's a journey that will take McDermid to war zones, fire scenes, and autopsy suites and bring her into contact with both extraordinary bravery and wickedness as she traces the history of forensics from its earliest beginnings to the cutting-edge science of the modern day.
©2015 Val McDermid (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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In his 26 years in the field, Richard Taylor has worked on well over a hundred murder cases, with victims and perpetrators from all walks of life. In this fascinating memoir, Taylor draws on some of the most tragic, horrific and illuminating of these cases - as well as dark secrets from his own family's past - to explore some of the questions he grapples with every day: why do people kill? Does committing a monstrous act make someone a monster? Could any of us, in the wrong circumstances, become a killer?
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Narration ruins what I’m sure is a great book
- By leelee8888 on 02-11-21
By: Richard Taylor
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Dead Men Do Tell Tales
- The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist
- By: William R. Maples PhD, Michael Browning
- Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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From a skeleton, a skull, or a mere fragment of burnt thighbone, prominent forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples can deduce the age, gender, and ethnicity of a murder victim, the manner in which the person was dispatched, and, ultimately, the identity of the killer. In Dead Men Do Tell Tales, Dr. Maples revisits his strangest, most interesting, and most horrific investigations, from the baffling cases of conquistador Francisco Pizarro and Vietnam MIAs to the mysterious deaths of President Zachary Taylor and the family of Czar Nicholas II.
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Recommended book
- By Amazon Customer on 10-30-17
By: William R. Maples PhD, and others
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Written in Bone
- Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind
- By: Sue Black
- Narrated by: Sue Black
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In her memoir All That Remains, internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist Dame Sue Black recounted her life lived eye to eye with the Grim Reaper. During the course of it, she offered a primer on the basics of identifying human remains, plenty of insights into the fascinating processes of death, and a sober, compassionate understanding of its inescapable presence in our existence. Now in this book, Black builds on that memoir, taking us on a guided tour of the human skeleton and explaining how each person's life history is revealed in their bones.
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A very human story by a very believable human
- By Gary on 09-21-21
By: Sue Black
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Forensics for Dummies (2nd Edition)
- By: D.P. Lyle MD
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Forensics for Dummies takes you inside the world of crime-scene investigation to give you the lowdown on this exciting field. Written by a doctor and former Law & Order consultant, this guide will have you solving crimes along with your favorite TV shows in no time.
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awesome
- By maurice ryan coleman on 09-03-22
By: D.P. Lyle MD
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The Distant Echo
- By: Val McDermid
- Narrated by: Tom Cotcher
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Four in the morning, mid-December, and snow blankets St. Andrews School. Student Alex Gilbery and his three best friends are staggering home from a party when they stumble upon the body of a young woman. Rosie Duff has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in the ancient Pictish cemetery. The only suspects are the four young students stained with her blood. Twenty-five years later, police mount a cold case review. Among the unsolved murders they're examining is that of Rosie Duff. But someone else has his own idea of justice.
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Beware, scam!!
- By CehTex on 12-14-22
By: Val McDermid
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A Place of Execution
- By: Val McDermid
- Narrated by: Paddy Glynn
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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A Greek tragedy in modern England, A Place of Execution is a taut psychological thriller that explores, exposes and explodes the border between reality and illusion in a multi-layered narrative that turns expectations on their head and reminds us that what we know is what we do not know.
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Truly amazing
- By KismetKat11 on 11-17-09
By: Val McDermid
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No Stone Unturned
- The True Story of the World's Premier Forensic Investigators
- By: Steve Jackson
- Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
- Length: 14 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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No Stone Unturned recreates the genesis of NecroSearch International: a small ,eclectic group of scientists and law enforcement personal, active and retired, who volunteer their services to help locate the clandestine graves of murder victims and recover the remains and evidence to assist with the apprehension and conviction of the killers.
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Forensic Superheroes
- By Mark on 09-14-16
By: Steve Jackson
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The Bone Woman
- A Forensic Anthropologist's Search for Truth in the Mass Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo
- By: Clea Koff
- Narrated by: Clea Koff
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1994, Rwanda was the scene of the first acts since World War II to be legally defined as genocide. Two years later, Clea Koff, a twenty-three-year-old forensic anthropologist, left the safe confines of a lab in Berkeley, California, to serve as one of sixteen scientists chosen by the United Nations to unearth the physical evidence of the Rwandan genocide. Over the next four years, Koff’s grueling investigations took her across geography synonymous with some of the worst crimes of the twentieth century.
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The observations of the author
- By Dorothy on 11-17-24
By: Clea Koff
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18 Tiny Deaths
- The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics
- By: Bruce Goldfarb
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Frances Glessner Lee, born a socialite to a wealthy and influential Chicago family in the 1870s, was never meant to have a career, let alone one steeped in death and depravity. Yet she developed a fascination with the investigation of violent crimes and made it her life's work. Best known for creating the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of dollhouses that appear charming - until you notice the macabre little details: an overturned chair, or a blood-spattered comforter.
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Another improbable lady giant
- By A. W. Einstein Jr. on 03-21-20
By: Bruce Goldfarb
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Forensic Psychology
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: David Canter
- Narrated by: Ken Kliban
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Lie detection, offender profiling, jury selection, insanity in the law, predicting the risk of re-offending, the minds of serial killers, and many other topics that fill news and fiction are all aspects of the rapidly developing area of scientific psychology broadly known as forensic psychology. This fascinating Very Short Introduction discusses all the aspects of psychology that are relevant to the legal and criminal process as a whole.
By: David Canter
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1979
- Allie Burns, Book 1
- By: Val McDermid
- Narrated by: Katie Leung
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The year started badly and only got worse - blizzards, strikes, power cuts, and political unrest were the norm. For journalist Allie Burns, however, someone else's bad news was the unmistakable sound of opportunity knocking, and the year is ripe with possibilities. But Allie is a woman in a man's world. Desperate to get away from the "women's stories" the Glasgow desk keeps assigning her, she strikes up an alliance with wannabe investigative journalist Danny Sullivan. From the start, their stories create enemies.
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Not my cuppa
- By Donna on 10-08-21
By: Val McDermid
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The Devil You Know
- Stories of Human Cruelty and Compassion
- By: Gwen Adshead, Eileen Horne
- Narrated by: Gwen Adshead
- Length: 14 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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What drives someone to commit an act of terrible violence? Drawing from her thirty years of experience in providing therapy to people in prisons and secure hospitals who have committed serious offenses, Dr. Gwen Adshead provides fresh and surprising insights into violence and the mind. Through a collaboration with coauthor Eileen Horne, Dr. Adshead brings her extraordinary career to life in a series of unflinching portraits.
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Extraordinary book about the power of an outstanding psychiatrist
- By Lucy D on 10-29-24
By: Gwen Adshead, and others
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The Education of a Coroner
- Lessons in Investigating Death
- By: John Bateson
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Ken Holmes worked in the Marin County Coroner's Office for 36 years, starting as a death investigator and ending as the three-term, elected coroner. As he grew into the job - which is different from what is depicted on television - Holmes learned a variety of skills, from finding hidden clues at death scenes, interviewing witnesses effectively, managing bystanders and reporters, preparing testimony for court, to notifying families of a death with sensitivity and compassion.
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Excellent read. What an Education.
- By Amazon Customer on 11-10-17
By: John Bateson
What listeners say about Forensics
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- R F
- 06-24-16
Her voice and the stories.
It was scary at first to think I would be listening to a Scottish women's accent for 11 hours, but you really get used to it.
The individual stories they use to explain each different field of forensics is very intriguing.
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3 people found this helpful
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- KismetKat11
- 05-17-17
Fascinating history
I'm very interested in forensics and have watched nearly every episode of "Forensic Files", "New Detectives", etc. I'm also a fan of Val McDermid, so it was fortuitous for these things to come together to create a book. I thought it might be a bit technical, but I found all the ideas, concepts, scientific jargon to be easy to follow. I like how she weaved actual cases into the narrative (i.e., the Colin Pitchfork case) as often I was familiar with the case but perhaps didn't have a full grasp of the forensic methodology and how it developed. It was very accessible and easy to listen to and I'd recommend to anyone interested in forensics.
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2 people found this helpful
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- AnnaSapphire
- 01-26-22
Excellent Information, Well Written, Entertaining
I really enjoyed this book and learned a great deal about the history of forensics- not often covered in such detail in other books about forensic investigation.
One beef- the narrator, although very good, offended me with her mimicking American accent. I'm American, and it strikes a personal nerve, I admit. Working with many British people in my profession, I have heard this nasal pitch and moronic sounding imitating of the American accent before. It's annoying and offensive. I get that we sound stupid to the British, but we don't sound like that. It's old- that worn out stereotype. It would have been much better not to attempt the accents and just use her own voice.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Pamela
- 09-03-18
Good history of forensics
I enjoyed the history of each of the elements of forensics discussed - fingerprints, blood spatter patterns, facial reconstructions, etc. Many unsung heroes got a little, well deserved, credit here. Most were discussed in the context of one or more real cases which introduced or advanced the science.
I personally enjoyed the reader's Scottish accent, as opposed to some other reviewers. You should be able to determine from the sample excerpt whether it is for you or not. What I did not like were the horrible English and American accents which sounded as if they were drawn directly from 1930 melodramas. Fortunately, they constituted less than 5% of the material. But sadly, they are what I will remember most about this narrator. I would like a version of this book where she read it through in her lovely Scottish brogue.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-01-18
Very interesting and informative.
I'll probably listen to it again. It provides a good path to the growth of forensic science.
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- R. J. Pendlebury
- 03-16-18
Excellent non fiction
The reading was wonderful with a range of accents to help distinguish between ‘characters’.
I found this book to be fascinating though not for the squeamish. If you are interested in true crime this is a great accompaniment.
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- R. Vanderwood
- 04-19-17
mystery fans will appreciate
this is a collection of stories of real life cases that demonstrate the powers and weaknesses of various forensic sciences.
i learned things i didn't know, i learned ways in which the entertainment industry has misled people (breaking bad fans will notice one in particular), and the narrative easily held my attention and entertained me.
the narrator is Scottish, and her accent is, too. i found it beautiful, and I'd like to hear more of her work, but if you have trouble following various accents, then you should listen to the preview first to make sure it won't trouble you.
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- Allison
- 05-01-17
Very interesting and informative
This was a fascinating and well told book that did a great job of bringing up various evidence used at trials, and choosing interesting cases that either complicated or complemented the use of that evidence. It's well told and flows nicely, and I really enjoyed the narrator's Scottish accent.
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- wbiro
- 02-16-18
Engaging and Informative
I learned that 'CSI' dealt with forensics (I never watched any of the shows - to me it was, 'Ug, not another police show'). The book actually made me clean-up my life in a small way (I got the lingering smut off of my computers)...
The chapters focused on the various aspects of forensics, so I liked how it was organized.
Particularly entertaining (and curious) for me was the narrator's Scottish accent. Scotland Yard, indeed.
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- Lori
- 06-06-16
very informative
I absolutely loved this book. As a criminology student it was an interesting and informative read. I learned many things about forensics that I never learned in the classroom. It helps to have an understanding of the history and evolution of science in the criminal justice field today. I didn't want to stop listening. Many of the stories really helped me to really grasp the information.
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