MURDER & THE MAKING OF ENGLISH CSI

Crime scene investigation or CSI has captured the modern imagination. On television screens and in newspapers, we follow the exploits of forensic officers wearing protective suits and working behind police tape to identify and secure physical evidence for laboratory analysis. But where did this ensemble of investigative specialists and scientific techniques come from? Ian Burney and Neil Pemberton tell the engrossing history of how, in the first half of the 20th century, novel routines, regulations, and techniques, from chain-of-custody procedures to the analysis of hair, blood, and fibre, fundamentally transformed the processing of murder scenes. Focusing on two iconic English investigations - the 1924 case of Emily Kaye, who was beaten and dismembered by her lover at a lonely beachfront holiday cottage, and the 1953 investigation into John Christie's serial murders in his dingy terraced home in the West End - Burney and Pemberton chart the emergence of the crime scene as a new space of forensic activity. Drawing on how-to investigator handbooks and detective novels to crime journalism, police case reports, and courtroom transcripts, the book shows readers how, over time, the focus of murder inquiries shifted from a primarily medical and autopsy-based interest in the victim's body to one dominated by laboratory technicians labouring over minute trace evidence. Many illus, 235 pages.