Persephone Lewin, ,Bite to Byte: The Story of Injury Analysis (2006) Parrel Press ISBN: 0-9550420-0-3.
✍ Scribed by A.W. Martin
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2007
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 101 KB
- Volume
- 47
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1355-0306
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
I found this quite a difficult book to review, primarily because I was unsure of the intended audience. The preface wasn't much help with this, though it did give the rationale for the production of the text which was essentially to counteract the media portrayal of forensic scientists and practitioners in the US as CSI guru's. To that end the book could be described as having achieved it's stated aim to some degree, however I found the text to be very generalised and deal with most matters in a superficial way. For example, the book covers DNA, forensic chemistry, scene reconstruction, digital evidence, fire and explosives, fingerprints, trace evidence, medical evidence, documents, firearms and toolmarks, toxicology and QA all in 291 pages….phew!. Depressingly, though not unsurprising, there is no chapter on evaluation/interpretation of evidence though it is mentioned in a number of the individual chapters. Similarly there is no chapter on the legal interface with forensic science.
The volume is geared to the US audience and I expect would be of help to legal practitioners, students and possibly some newer law enforcement personnel in that jurisdiction. I suspect it would be of no more than a passing interest to UK or European practitioners.