How the hot new science of forensic ecology is
cracking some of the world's toughest criminal cases.
When detectives come upon a murder victim, there's one
thing they want to know above all else: When did the
victim die? The answer can narrow a group of suspects,
make or break an alibi, even assign a name to an
unidentified body. But outside the fictional world of
murder mysteries, time-of-death determinations have
remained infamously elusive, bedeviling criminal
investigators throughout history. Armed with an array of
high-tech devices and tests, the world's best forensic
pathologists are doing their best to shift the balance,
but as Jessica Snyder Sachs demonstrates so eloquently
in Corpse, this is a case in which nature might just
trump technology: Plants, chemicals, and insects found
near the body are turning out to be the fiercest weapons
in our crime-fighting arsenal. In this highly original
book, Sachs accompanies an eccentric group of
entomologists, anthropologists, biochemists, and
botanists--a new kind of biological ''Mod Squad''--on
some of their grisliest, most intractable cases. She
also takes us into the courtroom, where ''post-O. J.''
forensic science as a whole is coming under fire and the
new multidisciplinary art of forensic ecology is
struggling to establish its credibility. Corpse is the
fascinating story of the 2000year search to pinpoint
time of death. It is also the terrible and beautiful
story of what happens to our bodies when we die. |
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