The dead talk. To the right listener, they tell us all about themselves: where they came from, who they are, how they lived, how they died - and who killed them. Through forensic medicine, a corpse, the scene of a crime or a single hair can reveal the secrets that hold the truth and allow justice to be done.

TV schedules are full of CSI: Miami and the media constantly confronts us with brutal crimes, many of which will be unravelled using forensic technology. But how much do we really understand about forensics? What is it like to be a SCO (Scene of Crime Operative)? Attend an autopsy? Where did it come from? How reliable are its proofs? Bestselling crime author Val McDermid, author of The Wire in the Blood and The Vanishing Point, draws on the vast archives of Wellcome Collection and interviews with top-level professionals in all areas of forensic science to answer these questions. She looks at famous (and unknown) murder cases, but also at investigations which revolve around the living: sexual assaults, missing persons, violent assaults, robberies, mistaken identity and custody cases. She will look at history of the subject, from its first appearances in the courts of seventeenth-century Europe, through Jack the Ripper to the pioneers of the twentieth century, whose discoveries include DNA fingerprinting, toxicology and criminal profiling.

Praise for Val McDermid: 'McDermid has the ruthless psychological scalpel that forms part of the equipment of all good novelists, whatever their genre. And, fortunately for us, she knows just how to use it. Guardian The sheer brio of McDermid's writing produces that increasingly rare thing, a genuine page-turner that doesn't insult its readers' intelligence. Independent To write one brilliant book is hard. To write 25 is a miracle. That is what Val McDermid has achieved over the course of her career and it's why she is a much-loved legend in the literary world. Sunday Express

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kontakt:

Agata Żabowska

agata@literatura.com.pl