I got it as this as a girl’s take on something semi-sociological (in a ‘general’ way), popular crime writing; I started to think that I had got a sorta cold-romantic/steely-eyed optimistic thing, like Star Trek or whatever, but eventually I lost a lot of faith in my girl and her choice of hero, who ended up just seeming like a, albeit probs above-average in technical skills, mostly generic representative of a past decade. (My psych textbook says that IQ has been trending up for decades, you know. IQ is probs made up mostly from very little, but I just mention because people assume that the dead are wise, you know. Assumptions, gumptions!) I guess I finished it because, I don’t know; it’s like history/sociology only more everyday (and half-diverse), so, I don’t know. I couldn’t call it ballast, so I finished it!…. I should probably just read straight romances, you know. But it’s hard not to be drawn to the great-great men, and the little-great men, you know. Fascists and captains of war; policemen and captains of the academy; /cinematic sequence/—you know. Well, you probably don’t. Why would you? Would that be a good thing? 😸

…. The 20th century sure had a number of strange customs!

…. I wish that detectives really were like television sleuths, you know. They’d take advanced communication courses, then come home and read Shakespeare while listening to Bach. Or, at least, they wouldn’t be half-man half-machine…. And so bad with money! Well, maybe television sleuths would be bad at money, too; they’d either be afraid of the stuff and think it beneath them, or I guess the audience just thinks that money is for “the good people”, you know—the big people. No, the Twenties Man wasn’t a folk hero of science, not really, although the Dawson character who made that clear doesn’t seem to have noticed the difference. —Why, he wasn’t always a cultured all-around good citizen, and didn’t always get professional, career and personal results, either…. But he read a lot of books, dammit!…. He was better than the rest of us. —A pretty poor opinion you must have of the rest of us poor slobs, Miss Dawson, if all it takes to be better than us is to read a damn fine pile of books! —Oh, damn you; he’s a hero! (sobs)

…. (smiles) I’m quite a strange goose; I know.

Anyway, in a way, it’s a noble attempt—to document the positive, pro-social guy who with his mind and his goodness tried to rectify the imbalance of crime, instead of focusing only on the people who lost their minds and their balance and slipped into crime—but it’s not executed well, you know.

…. I hate to sound like I’m gratuitously provoking scientists, but it is odd sometimes how something so poorly understood generally could be so central to the high-and-proper aspect of our civilization. Some of them are probably content with that, content to be gatekeepers and paid accordingly, at least in prestige, but I don’t know. It’s a problem that’ll probably be more than one century in the undoing of.

…. —It’s these intelligent laymen who are the problem, declared Robbie the Robot. Like judges: they’re all slackers!

It was a very strange time—and so much like our own!

This book tells the story of Edward Oscar Heinrich, a chemist who expanded his education to a variety of disciplines that today form the foundation of modern forensic science programs. He served as an expert witness in many cases, including the death of Virginia Rappe, for which Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was accused of manslaughter and rape (and tried three times), and made deductions with a truly Sherlock Holmesian flair. Heinrich was a pioneer in many ways, even if some of the methods he uses now are no longer considered as reliable as they once were (e.g., blood pattern analysis, handwriting analysis). This was overall a good book, with lots of interesting details mined from Heinrich’s papers at the University of California at Berkeley. The papers had never been catalogued, but Dawson persuaded the library to give her access, and the archivist actually catalogued them while Dawson wrote her book. The only thing I was a bit leery of was the inclusion of the crime-scene from the Allene Lamson case, in which Allene’s body is present. It was a gruesome scene, even in a small black-and-white photo. This book may be for you if you’re interested in the early days of forensic science, especially if you liked Bruce Goldfarb’s 18 Tiny Deaths (about Frances Glessner Lee, another innovator in the field. ( )

Its fine. The writing style absolutely got in the way for me. Its not a book I will recommend. ( )

The history of Dr, Ed Heinrich, America's first forensic scientist. Details many case histories.. An interesting book. ( )

I enjoy mysteries so I found this book interesting. I found the history of forensics and the information about how they were used in some of the trials fascinating. The book does jump around a bit, but overall it was a very interesting and enjoyable audio book. ( )