This book is not for the squeamish. The introduction launches into
a description of the discovery of a rotting corpse in considerable
detail: 'her head was almost completely stripped of flesh, and the
exposed skull had been polished by the scraping mandibles of beetle
larvae... ' Enough. Why all this grisly detail? The topic is
forensic entomology, the investigation of violent crime through the
scientific investigation and analysis of insect activity. This work
ranges from investigation of time of death by analysing the decay
of a corpse in context of the insects found with - within very
often - it, to more simply using knowledge of insects to trap a
killer. One example, and one conviction, turns on the perpetrator
having the leg of a grasshopper in his trouser turnup. It matched
the rest of the insect found tangled in the victim's clothes right
down to the break where it had torn from the rest of the
grasshopper's body. Despite the gory detail this is, perhaps
surprisingly, an interesting read. The author pioneered the
techniques he describes, and writes with the tone of an enthusiast
and one who knows what he does is important and changes things. As
well as describing the work and its impact on a number of cases, he
charts the growing use of such techniques and the added certainty
that they are able to bring to ensuring that justice is done. The
detail and thoroughness with which knowledge of insects can be
applied to criminal investigations is impressive and ultimately
intriguing. (Kirkus UK)
THE FORENSIC ENTOMOLOGIST turns a dispassionate, analytic eye on
scenes from which most people would recoil -- human corpses in
various stages of decay, usually the remains of people who have met
a premature end through accident or mayhem. To M. Lee Goff and his
fellow forensic entomologists, each body recovered at a crime scene
is an ecosystem, a unique microenvironment colonized in succession
by a diverse array of flies, beetles, mites, spiders, and other
arthropods: some using the body to provision their young, some
feeding directly on the tissues and by-products of decay, and still
others preying on the scavengers. Using actual cases on which he
has consulted, Goff shows how knowledge of these insects and their
habits allows forensic entomologists to furnish investigators with
crucial evidence about crimes. Even when a body has been reduced to
a skeleton, insect evidence can often provide the only available
estimate of the post-mortem interval, or time elapsed since death,
as well as clues to whether the body has been moved from the
original crime scene, and whether drugs have contributed to the
death. An experienced forensic investigator who regularly advises
law enforcement agencies in the United States and abroad, Goff is
uniquely qualified to tell the fascinating if unsettling story of
the development and practice of forensic entomology.
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