Hard Evidence: How Detectives Inside the Fbi's Sci-Crime Lab Have Helped Solve America's Toughest Cases

Provides an insider's view of detective work in a modern crime lab, detailing the facts associated with the most notorious cases in modern history, including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 and the Kennedy assassination. 25,000 first printing.

True-crime fans will savor this room-by-room, machine-by-machine tour of the FBI Criminal Laboratory in Washington, D.C., perhaps the world's best forensics department. Fisher (Killer) introduces readers to units that involve chemistry (with a special emphasis on toxicology), explosives, hairs and fibers, fingerprints and DNA analysis, material analysis, documents, firearms, photography, video enhancement and polygraphy. Included are details of the ballistic investigations of the assassination of John Kennedy, the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, the murder of Martin Luther King, and the World Trade Center bombing. Readers will be astounded by the abilities of the high-technology equipment and the talents of the investigators who staff this extraordinary sci-crime lab. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In forensics, the FBI's crime lab has no peer, a fact that Fisher confirms in his detailed but sprightly account of the experts who work there and the cases they've cracked. If one thing unites the inventive ways people commit murder, whether by poisoning, shooting, or bombing, it is the uniqueness of some microscopic piece of evidence left at the crime scene; it could be flecks of paint, traces of a chemical, bodily hairs or fluids, shards of plastic or glass, a piece of paper, a striated bullet. The lab is divided into units (as Fisher also arranges his chapters) devoted to each such type of trace evidence. Allowed ample access to the facility's personnel, Fisher lets his awe and appreciation for their work run free in his prose--but keeps within a well-organized arrangement of the welter of facts--and so produces a work quite difficult to put down. Most of the cases, many but not all well publicized, contain appalling, hard-to-stomach brutality, as the critical minutiae inevitably reconstruct the victims' last moments of life; without such close examinations, justice has no chance. A fine peek behind the scenes. Gilbert Taylor

Major advances in forensic science, such as DNA analysis, have taken place in the recent past. With the interested lay reader in mind, Washington Post journalist Fisher describes the work of the FBI Crime Laboratory?regarding explosives, firearms, hairs and fibers, toxicology, etc.?and how it has been used to solve problematic cases. Writing with the FBI's cooperation, Fisher tends to accept at face value their judgments in some controversial cases?Sacco and Vanzetti, Alger Hiss, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, and the JFK assassination. Nevertheless, his enthusiasm for the progress in processing the faintest crime-scene clues is not misplaced. While some detailed accounts of forensic procedures can be soporific, they also pinpoint guilt or innocence previously undetectable. Recommended for larger popular crime collections.?Gregor A. Preston, formerly with Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.