Book of the week. Forensics, the Anatomy of Crime 3/5.

Part 3 of 5, Val McDermid talks about her new book, 'The Anatomy of Crime', launched prior to a Wellcome Collection exhibition on the subject in February 2015. She explores history and practices in forensics science referencing historical cases as well as those in the more recent news. The late Victorian age saw the advent of finger printing. From the 1980s most of the documentation and analysis of finger prints is carried out by computers. Finger prints are captured in certain ways; they are either 'patent' or 'latent'. Not much has changed in terms of capturing prints from a crime scene. McDermid recounts a case of a miscarriage of justice; finger prints are not without controversy. She turns to blood splatter analysis. Formerly blood scene analysis could only corroborate common blood types. More recently, DNA analysis has provided a breakthrough and testing is getting quicker despite the tiny amount of crime scene material.