Literature and forensic science

SIGNIFICANCE: Forensic science has long been represented in fiction, both within the confines of genre fiction and in mainstream novels. The scope and style of this representation have created in the minds of the general public particular images of the field and those who work in it.

Most people who are interested in forensic science have no actual contact with the subject. They are not forensic scientists of any description, nor are they associated with the police or justice systems, the end users of forensic science. They are not doctors, pathologists, odontologists, entomologists, palynologists, or other professionals whose work may on occasion intersect with forensic science and the justice system. Often they are not victims of crime, criminals, or friends and family of victims or criminals, who could be exposed to forensic science in court settings.

Their interest in forensic science, thus, is most likely to have been stimulated by other than some professional context. It has become increasingly possible for interested persons to attend forensic science courses at universities and colleges, and many schools teach forensic science as a way of encouraging students to study science in a less specific way. Forensic science textbooks at both basic and advanced levels have become readily available, and, of course, the Internet has made quite complex material in forensic science easily accessible.

It seems likely, however, that for most people the initial stimulation of interest in forensic matters comes from entertainment, from fictional depictions of the subject and its practitioners in books, plays, films, and television programs, rather than more formal, educative processes. Forensic scientists believe that these media depictions have effects on public perceptions of forensic science. Much debate has taken place in the wider forensic community over the possible existence of the so-called CSI effect—that is, the notion that jurors expect to be presented with evidence based on high-quality forensic science in all legal cases, because that is what the television show of that name has encouraged them to expect. The media has fostered a number of misconceptions about forensic science.

The Detective

It is difficult to think back to a time when science as it is now perceived, as an organized body of knowledge that provides information about the world, was not part of the standard discourse. The first fictional detectives show this, in that deduction—rather than any forensic science analysis—provides the answers. The first emergence of the detective novel is seen in Charles Dickens’s novel Bleak House (1852–1853), in which the police detective Mr. Bucket solves the mystery that permeates the novel (and a murder). The crime is only part of the novel, however, and Mr. Bucket not a main character. Wilkie Collins’s novel The Moonstone (1868), in which the theft of a jewel is the story and the theft is solved by Sergeant Cuff, is considered to be the first true detective novel.

Earlier than these works, however, Edgar Allan Poe created C. Auguste Dupin, the first fictional detective, who was based on the French criminal-turned-policeman François-Eugène Vidocq. Dupin appears in a series of Poe’s short stories, of which the most well known is “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841). Dupin employs ratiocination—that is, the use of logical thought processes—to form conclusions. As a character, he is the ancestor of any arrogant and intelligent fictional detective, usually outside the police force, who solves cases that no one else can, much to the amazement of other characters in the work.

Clear descendants of Dupin are Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, who is perhaps Agatha Christie’s most famous detective. In the novels, plays, and short stories that feature these detectives, the details of the crimes are solved by the reasoning of the central characters.

The detective novel continued to evolve, although fans of this genre point to a “golden age” during which such writers as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Rex Stout were writing. These traditions were carried on by authors such as Elizabeth George, Colin Dexter, and Donna Leon. The detectives who appear in works by these authors may be private detectives or police detectives, but in all these works the forensic content is minimized, with more emphasis placed on deductive processes. When forensic skills are required, an expert is called in or the detective supplies his own skills. Poirot, for example, knows quite a bit about poisons, no doubt reflecting Christie’s own interest in the topic, and Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley can call on Scotland Yard skills.

An interesting British writer is P. D. James, who spent much of her working life as a public servant associated with the criminal justice system in England and with the government branch that oversees forensic science. James’s descriptions of forensic science work and its contacts with her fictional investigations are notably accurate. The scientists help the investigations, they do not direct them. James’s detective character Adam Dalgliesh has a career that spans several decades, and the forensic science in the Dalgliesh novels changes with time, reflecting changes in procedures and techniques in the real world, right up to the careful scene examination and hygiene precautions law-enforcement agencies put in place to deal with DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) evidence. In Death of an Expert Witness (1977), the second Dalgliesh novel, a forensic science laboratory is at the center of events, and a forensic biologist is a murder victim.

Sherlock Holmes and His Influence

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes, and the first Holmes story appeared in 1887. This great detective served as a model for much of what came later in crime literature, not only in his professional activities but also in his personality and habits.

During the period when Doyle was writing his Sherlock Holmes stories, science was beginning to be applied in a systematic way to the investigation of crime. Although not all of the key enabling studies were carried out then (for example, Matthieu-Joseph-Bonaventure Orfila published the first toxicological work in 1813), it was a time of general scientific advances in the Western world, and these advances were inevitably reflected in crime fiction. For example, systematic studies of fingerprinting, firearms identification, ABO blood grouping, and questioned document examination were all carried out near the beginning of the twentieth century. Work by Edmond Locard and Hans Gross began to increase consideration of forensic science as a discipline, and, of course, is still regarded as one of the key principles of forensic science.

A knowledge of science and the ability to apply it is what distinguishes Sherlock Holmes from his predecessors. He is described in the Holmes stories by Dr. John Watson, who is not stupid, but merely slower than Holmes (as are most other people). Holmes knows a great deal about chemistry, botany, and anatomy, among other topics, and over the course of numerous stories he shows himself to be able to identify newspaper print, carry out handwriting analysis, break codes, identify paper, identify blood by chemical tests, track people, identify soils, and, of course, look at scenes of events and reconstruct them. In modern terms, Holmes might be described as a combination of pathologist, toxicologist, criminalist, document examiner, forensic serologist, shoe-print expert, and crime scene examiner. In many of his cases he acts as a forensic scientist.

This set of skills is remarkable for any single person to have, even allowing for the much smaller amount of knowledge and range of skills Holmes’s many roles would have contained in 1900 compared with the twenty-first century. (Even pathology, an established medical specialty linked to anatomical studies at that time, was less complex than its twenty-first century equivalent.) Why would Doyle make the choice to combine all these skills in a single character? Two main reasons likely lie behind his choice. First, one way in which a writer can keep a work of fiction focused and easy to follow is to restrict the cast of characters. This is particularly important in a short story, the form in which Holmes was most often presented. Incorporating all the expertise required by the plot in a single person was thus advantageous.

The other reason lies in the creation of the character. Doyle understood that readers are impressed by a person who knows so much and who contributes so much to the unraveling of the mystery or crime. Many authors since that time have continued to use this technique. Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme is a wheelchair-using former crime scene investigator whose skills include knowledge of many areas of forensic science; this helps to keep Rhyme central to the plots of the books. The character Kay Scarpetta, in a series of novels by Patricia Cornwell, moves over time from being a formidable forensic pathologist to being a specialist in other fields, such as crime scene investigation, as well. This allows Cornwell to keep the focus on Scarpetta, no matter what the criminal events in a given novel are.

A notable aspect of the work that Holmes, Rhyme, and Scarpetta perform is their ability to play major roles in investigations and be deeply involved in their cases. In real life, forensic scientists of all kinds do their own work—whether that work is the dissection of bodies, comparison of shoe prints, analysis of drugs, or something else—and then give the information they gather through their work to the investigator (usually a member of the local law-enforcement agency), who then interviews witnesses, interrogates suspects, and so on. By having their characters deeply involved in both the science and nonscience aspects of their cases, Doyle, Deaver, and Cornwell keep these characters at the center of their own stories.

Another lingering influence of Sherlock Holmes is related to the fact that he is a leading character whom readers feel they know very well. In part, this is because of the sheer volume of Doyle’s work, but the main reason is the collection of quirks that Doyle has given Holmes. It can be difficult to create and sustain character in fiction that is purely plot-driven, but by enumerating a character’s traits and habits, an author can help readers to recognize the individual. Thus Doyle created a Holmes who plays the violin, dabbles in drug abuse, and lights up his pipe when he needs to pause and think. This pattern has been repeated by later authors. Scarpetta drinks expensive malt whiskey, enjoys nice cars and clothes, and cooks authentic Italian food from scratch. It would be unfair to refer to Rhyme’s physical condition as a character quirk, but readers remember him in part because his disability and his use of technology that helps circumvent the problems associated with his restricted mobility stick in readers’ minds.

The Forensic Procedural Novel

The term “police procedural” has often been applied to the type of crime novel in which the methods and procedures of police work and the structures and personnel of police organizations are at the core of the work. Police procedurals are different from detective novels, whether the main characters are amateur or private detectives, such as Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, or police detectives, such as James’s Dalgliesh. Forensic science may be appear at some point in a police procedural, just as it may in a detective novel.

It has been suggested that the term “forensic procedural” could be applied to those novels in which forensic science, rather than being another technique or method by which the investigators establish the truth, becomes a main driver of the plot, with forensic scientists being either the primary investigators or very close to the primary investigators. The program CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, along with its spin-offs, provides the most prominent example of the forensic procedural in television. In this show, a group of multiskilled experts in bloodstain pattern analysis, entomology, ballistics, general crime scene examination, fingerprints, and almost any other forensic specialty necessary to the plot solve both large and small crimes. If the science were to be removed from CSI, nearly nothing would be left. Such popular-media depictions reinforce public perceptions that forensic science and forensic scientists can do anything and find out anything.

Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta novels and those of Kathy Reichs featuring the forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan are also examples of forensic procedurals. In both cases, the job and status of the main character allow her to function pivotally in the investigations in the books, even if actual professionals who fill those roles in real life can see ways in which real protocols are subverted or loosened for the purposes of the plots. It is interesting that after more than ten novels, Brennan is still a forensic anthropologist, whereas after the eleventh Scarpetta novel, Cornwell moved her main character out of her forensic pathology role and made her a forensic consultant, allowing the character to expand her repertoire of forensic skills.

Clearly, some forensic science roles fit into forensic procedurals more easily than others. For example, crime scene work can be, or can be made to be with a little adjustment, more key to a complete investigation and more involved in the investigation than, say, the work of a forensic entomologist. Generally, the more wide-ranging a specialty is, the more easily it can be made the center of a procedural novel. A specialty that involves dealing with the crime scene, the victim, the suspect, and many different sorts of evidence is ideal.

A forensic specialty that has proved amenable to the forensic procedural is forensic psychology, particularly as presented through the psychological profiler. Author Val McDermid created Tony Hill, James Patterson created Alex Cross (a policeman as well as a scientist), and Jonathan Kellerman created Alex Delaware. A major character in Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta novels is Benton Wesley, who is a criminal profiler for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The psychologists in these novels are able to comment on many aspects of the investigations as they unfold because their expertise can be valuable as new clues are revealed that cast light on the original crime or crimes.

Interesting and in some ways atypical relationships exist in Kellerman’s and McDermid’s novels. It is somewhat traditional for the forensic experts in crime novels to exhibit arrogance toward colleagues, in particular toward any police who may be involved. This can be seen in Holmes’s relationship with Dr. Watson, in Poirot’s relationship with Colonel Hastings, and, to a lesser extent, in the various relationships that Scarpetta and Rhyme have with investigating police officers. These novelistic relationships mirror the relationship of the reader with the expert, in that the reader accepts the expert’s brilliance and that the expert has the answers. Although they are very different relationships, those between Tony Hill and Detective Carol Jordan and between Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis are both those of fully equal partners in the investigations.

The Historical Forensic Scientist

In the information-rich and technologically driven modern age, the crime novel has kept pace with changes and improvements in the forensic sciences. Perhaps as a reaction against the increasingly technical content of many detective and mystery novels, another type of novel has arisen that is effectively a historical novel dealing with a crime. Perhaps the most widely known among the novels in this genre (because they were adapted for a popular television series) are those in the Brother Cadfael series, written by Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter). Brother Cadfael is a monk in medieval England who uses standard detection skills and his knowledge of herbs and poisons to solve crimes.

Susanna Gregory’s novels feature Matthew Bartholomew, a doctor at the University of Cambridge in the period of the Black Death. Bartholomew is a pathologist, and the character functions, like Brother Cadfael, as both overall investigator and forensic specialist. Other historical series, such as Lindsey Davis’s series set in ancient Rome and featuring a character named Marcus Didius Falco, who is a sort of private investigator, have no specific forensic content, but the main characters use a knowledge of issues that in modern times are regarded as forensic. These sorts of books cannot help but be somewhat anachronistic, but good writers work very hard to keep the bounds of knowledge displayed by their forensic specialists tightly within the range of what people living in the works’ historical periods could have known.

Flavia de Luce, an eleven-year-old British girl, is an unlikely scientist and amateur detective. However, as a chemistry protege and daughter of a long-missing adventurer, Flavia cannot resist solving a mystery, especially when corpses continually arrive virtually on her doorstep. She uses her scientific knowledge, especially her expertise in poisons, to solve these puzzles in the series by Alan Bradley. The author turns the English country village mystery on its head with his protagonist. A more conventional forensic detective is Dr. Ruth Galloway, the forensic archaeologist at the center of the fifteen-book series by Elly Griffiths. Although Ruth's focus is on the long dead in Norfolk--she is a noted bone expert--she becomes a consultant for the North Norfolk police when they discover remains.

Forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Blass, who founded the Body Farm research lab at the University of Tennessee, jumped into writing fiction in 2006. A fictional version of Blass is at the center of the Body Farm series, which began with Carved in Bone. Journalist Jon Jefferson is coauthor of the series, which takes place in the Body Farms labs.

Common Threads

Clearly, the various categories of fictional works described here overlap, and some generalizations can be made. In these works, scientists are typically presented as persons who have the answers or who supply answers to investigators. Usually, something else can be done when a particular forensic technique fails to deliver a result. An equivocal result, or one that is clear-cut but does not advance the case, is less common than a clinching result or one that “proves” something.

Readers of such fiction need to keep in mind that the science serves the story; the story is not written or read to serve the science. Perhaps the most important thing that readers should remember is that all such works are primarily for the enjoyment of the readers—although some links to reality are important, as long as readers suspend their disbelief while they inhabit the worlds of these novels, the writers have succeeded.

Bibliography

Agnew, Robin. "Elly Griffiths and Saying Farewell to Ruth Galloway." Mystery Scene, 2023, www.mysteryscenemag.com/blog-article/7668-elly-griffiths-and-saying-farewell-to-ruth-galloway. Accessed 15 Aug. 2024.

"The Authors." Jefferson Bass Official Website, bodyfarmnovels.com/bio.html. Accessed 15 Aug. 2024.

Frank, Lawrence. Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence: The Scientific Investigations of Poe, Dickens, and Doyle. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Gerber, Samuel M., editor. Chemistry and Crime: From Sherlock Holmes to Today’s Courtroom. American Chemical Society, 1983.

Hein, E. K. The Forensic Mission: Investigate Forensic Science Through a Killer Mystery! John Wiley & Sons, 2007.

Martin, Rebecca, editor. Critical Insights: Crime and Detective Fiction. Salem Press, 2013.

Price, Cheryl B. "Probability and Capital Crime: The Rise and Fall of Actuarial Detection in Victorian Crime Fiction." Clues: A Journal of Detection, vol. 34, no. 2, 2016, pp. 7–17. Humanities Source, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hus&AN=119930624&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed 30 Dec. 2016.

Rollyson, Carl, editor. Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction. Rev. ed., Salem Press, 2008. 5 vols.

Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Thomas, Ronald R. Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science. Cambridge UP, 1999.

Wagner, E. J. The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, the Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective’s Greatest Cases. John Wiley & Sons, 2007.