American Sherlock

Title: American Sherlock
Author:Kate Winkler Dawson
Genre: Nonfiction
Pages:
Rating: 4.5
 From the acclaimed author of Death in the Air ("Not since Devil in the White City has a book told such a harrowing tale"--Douglas Preston) comes the riveting story of the birth of criminal investigation in the twentieth century.  Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with curiosities--beakers, microscopes, Bunsen burners, and hundreds upon hundreds of books--sat an investigator who would go on to crack at least two thousand cases in his forty-year career. Known as the "American Sherlock Holmes," Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of America's greatest--and first--forensic scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing evidence, and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost supernatural.  Heinrich was one of the nation's first expert witnesses, working in a time when the turmoil of Prohibition led to sensationalized crime reporting and only a small, systematic study of evidence. However with his brilliance, and commanding presence in both the courtroom and at crime scenes, Heinrich spearheaded the invention of a myriad of new forensic tools that police still use today, including blood spatter analysis, ballistics, lie-detector tests, and the use of fingerprints as courtroom evidence. His work, though not without its serious--some would say fatal--flaws, changed the course of American criminal investigation.  Based on years of research and thousands of never-before-published primary source materials, American Sherlock captures the life of the man who pioneered the science our legal system now relies upon--as well as the limits of those techniques and the very human experts who wield them

My thoughts
Would I recommend it?Yes
Will I read anything else by this author? Yes
When it comes to nonfiction I tend to read alot of it especially when it comes to true crime and as soon as I this I knew I had to request it and I'm so glad I did, because this isn't just about true crime that took place , or how they were solved this is about the life of the man who is one of the pioneers of the forensic science as well as about the contributions that he made ,the remarkable breakthroughs and in its flaws discovered in more contemporary times. The pace was fast, making this a great read, but not lacking in information. With that said I want to thank Edelweiss for letting me read and review exchange for my honest opinion.