Review: Evans, The Father of Forensics

[truepenny]

The Father of Forensics: The Groundbreaking Cases of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, and the Beginnings of Modern CSI by Colin Evans

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Biography of Sir Bernard Spilsbury. Does what it says on the tin.

Since Spilsbury was a man consumed by his work, it's not surprising that the most interesting aspect of the book is Evans' discussion of the cases Spilsbury testified in, from George Joseph Smith (the Brides in the Bath man) and Hawley Harvey Crippen to the Wartime Ripper, Gordon Cummins. Evans writes very clearly, both about the murders and about the forensics of catching the killers, and he's very careful to include discussion of cases where Spilsbury was uncertain or wrong, to refute the image of Spilsbury as an infallible monolith. He also talks about Spilsbury's courtroom performance, how his certainty in his conclusions infected juries for thirty years.

This was a good book (four stars), but not a great book (definitely not five stars), and I'm trying to figure out what was missing. I don't know if it's that Evans' prose feels a little facile (and he uses section headers in his chapters, which, I dunno) or that for all that this is a carefully even-handed biography, it feels shallow ... there's something that could be there and isn't.



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