Dead Reckoning: The New Science of Catching Killers

Michael Baden and Marion Roach take readers to the autopsy table in the morgue and practically place the scalpel in their hands to show how advances in forensic science are solving crimes as never before. They visit cases both famous and ordinary to explain why the first hour at a crime scene is crucial. They reveal, for the first time, how a key clue to the killer of Nicole Brown Simpson was lost during the transportation of her body to the morgue. In another case, they show how something as obscure as the imprint of a button on a dead man's skin was overlooked until months later when, while reviewing the crime-scene photos, Dr Baden saw it, causing the case to take an astonishing turn. Baden and Roach invite readers to be present at the analysis of soil, plant matter, insects, blood spatters, bone, teeth, hair, weather and other crime-scene evidence to witness how the startling accuracy of science can improve the chances of a just verdict. Dead Reckoning has already been hailed, before publication, as a classic of rigorous an enlightened writing about forensic pathology, both in its principles and in its practice.