Popular History of Belle Epoque Forensics

[L.J.Steele]

Hoobler's The Crimes of Paris (2009) uses the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 as a framing story to talk about crime, detection, and law enforcement in France from 1900 to 1914. There's a fair amount about Bertillon (of course), as well as information about Edmond Locard and Cesare Lombroso. Some interesting stuff about the early struggles between fingerprinting and bertillonage that I hadn't seen elsewhere.

[Alan C]

Sounds interesting! I have placed a hold on it at my local library. Thanks!

[gerritvolckeryck]

The book is well written and a pleasure to read. Lots of annotations, which is not very common in these kind of popular books. Browsing through the annotations, I wonder if in some places, it wouldn't have been better to choose some other sources. French books for instance and not wikipedia, which puts Kirk's words into Locard's mouth as it comes to the "Exchange Principle".

Anyway, it was my favorite bedtime book these last few days.

[L.J.Steele]

A friend just lent me "The Poisoner's Handbook" by Deborah Blum which is a history of the founding of the NY Medical Examiner's Office in the early 1920s. Nothing on fingerprints, but nonetheless interesting discussion of early forensic toxicology -- some of the fighting over the politiciziation of the lab reminds me of some of the current debates about the relationship between current labs and police agencies.