"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"-- Provided by publisher.

Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with beakers, microscopes, and hundreds upon hundreds of books sat Edward Oscar Heinrich, one of America's first forensic scientists. Working in a time when the turmoil of Prohibition led to sensationalized crime reporting and only a small, systematic study of evidence, 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. Dawson 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. -- adapted from jacket