Alongside lots of fiction books I read non fiction books, usually having one main one on the go alongside one or more novels. This book about the history of forensics studied through the lens of Agatha Christie stories is my latest read. And it was very enjoyable. Rating 4/5 stars. The author is the curator of a pathology museum and I believe worked for many years as a forensic technician, assisting with post-mortems.
Each chapter looks at a different aspect of forensics, and explains the context in which Agatha Christie's stories fit into, and how she depicts the techniques used in her stories. This use of her own stories is powerful, but would appeal more to someone who is very familiar with lots of her plots. The book is careful not to reveal major spoilers, but a sense of recognition would work best for the reader in these sections.
Alongside discussing forensics using Agatha's stories each chapter explains the history of the relevant aspect of forensics, discussing evolving techniques, and numerous real life cases. Many of these are very well known to the general audience (e.g. Dr Crippen), but others much less so. And all are well described, covering developments in forensics primarily up to and throughout Agatha Christie’s life.
I did skip quite a lot of the autopsy chapter, having lost my Dad relatively recently, and not least because he donated his body to medical science for anatomy students to learn from. But I hugely enjoyed what I read.
One slight disappointment for me was in the table of murder methods by story at the back of the book. This seems to just focus on Agatha's novels, not her shorter stories, of which there were so very many. So it presented a very incomplete picture. But the main section of the text is full of references to these.
However this is a slight quibble. The book could perhaps be trimmed a little for me as well, but is an effective read. To be fair I have read a lot of Agatha Christie's stories. But it would also work well for fans of TV programmes like CSI who want to know more of the real life history.
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