Century of the Detective

"With all of the tenacious research, and without the intrusive first person device of his earlier The Century of the Surgeon. Thorwald transfers to the allied scientific disciplines used in the development of procedural criminal detection and provides a massive dossier. This is a four part study: of identification, as Bertillon, the illhumored, unappreciated clerk in the Surete developed his system of body measurements which were later to be replaced by dactylography; of forensic medicine, as bodies, bloodstains, hairs, etc. could be submitted to microscopic, milligrammatic analysis; of forensic toxicology and forensic ballistics. Famous cases from every continent exemplify -- the Gouffe case, Harvey Crippen, Marie Lafarge and Sacco & Vanzetti, along with a formidable number unfamiliar to the common reader. Thorwald, while never"" a spirited writer, is extremely conscientious and no detail is smudged as he wraps a winding sheet of irrefutable facts around this developmental history of detection."