Review by Choice Review
Science writer Beavan takes an interesting approach to some of the history of forensic science. He begins by presenting a real case that involved the early use of fingerprint science; then he leaves the case and the reader hanging, while he covers much of the history of fingerprint science with in-depth biographical information about the major players in this area, including Galton, Henry, Vucetich, Faulds, Bertillion, etc. He intersperses these with other noteworthy cases involving forensic evidence that includes fingerprints. He ends the book with the wrap-up of the case he presented at the beginning. This book is a quick read, with large font type and 200-plus pages. Even so, it is packed with interesting information about the origins of forensic science, especially fingerprints. It can be enjoyed by everyone, from high school students through forensic scientists and judges. J. A. Siegel Michigan State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Loops, whorls, arches, or tents--scrutinize your fingertips and you'll see these basic designs. A collection of characters made the same examination a century ago, and from their disputes has descended the modern fingerprint system. Yet a competing system of identification vied with fingerprinting, as these two histories interestingly point out. In the rapidly urbanizing societies of the late nineteenth century, where personal recognition was the fallible means of identification, imposture was easy for habitual criminals and frustrating to police and victims. The search for unique, and hence identifying, characteristics of the human body inspired eventually the fingerprinting system and a competitor called "anthropometry." Beavan courses through this subject in lively, true-crime story telling fashion, opening with a murder scene and closing with the 1905 hanging of the two British brothers convicted on the basis of a thumbprint. Within those brackets, Beavan introduces several men who independently came to believe that a person's fingerprints were unique, his hero being one Henry Faulds, a Scottish doctor whose wrangles with William Herschel and Francis Galton, famous in their day, lend Beavan his dramatic material. Meanwhile, in the musty archives of the Paris police, clerk Alphonse Bertillon chafed at the uselessness of his records for identifying recidivists; his reform of physically measuring criminals and systematizing their classification--anthropometry--was used by many police organizations until the 1920s. In recounting the cases that displaced bertillonage, Beavan adopts an appealing human-interest approach that chimes with popularity Cole's treatment of fingerprinting is also commendable on its own terms, being more clinical and less anecdotal than Beavan's approach. Cole's academic bent shows that the court cases Beavan dramatizes were not quite as singular in the ascendancy of fingerprinting over the Bertillon system, but rather added weights that finally tipped the scales in favor of fingerprinting; he is also cautionary about its claim to absolute reliability. Each author has advantages of emphasis, and libraries can decide which work is better suited to their patrons. --Gilbert Taylor
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Beavan's lively debut explores developments in criminal forensics that culminated in the first prosecution based on fingerprint evidence, in London in 1905. He opens his narrative with the wanton double murder of the elderly Farrows and the crude initial investigation. Beavan, a writer for Esquire and other magazines, examines at length the slow scientific inroads into 19th-century law enforcement. Following the sharp decline in hanging offenses, European societies were swept by hysteria regarding multi-aliased career criminals. Officials reluctantly explored ways of confirming identities of repeat offenders, notably Alphonse Bertillon's anthropometric system, which posited that "criminal" body types could be identified by minute bodily measurements. Several British bureaucrats had experimented with inked fingerprints for identification, but Henry Faulds, an impoverished Scottish medical missionary in Japan, definitively claimed that fingerprints' particular qualities were ideal for criminal prosecution. Faulds's early publications spawned fingerprint science; unfortunately, his thunder was stolen by the ambitious, better-positioned Francis Galton (Darwin's cousin), whom Beavan portrays as an effete plagiarist. Police in South America and India ventured into this terra incognita, but Scotland Yard fiercely resisted. Only tragic anthropometric and eyewitness misidentifications led grudging officials to use the Farrows trial as a test case. The embittered Faulds served as a defense witness, contending that single-digit identification, the basis for this ultimately successful prosecution, was unreliable. This entertaining and balanced work centers less on academic precepts than does Simon Cole's Suspect Identities (see review below). Beavan's effortless prose, firm grasp of his subject and vividly drawn characters will delight history buffs and armchair criminologists. Photos and illus. (May) Forecast: This is a charmer that, with good reviews and effective promotion, could catch on outside the true-crime crowd. There will also be online promotion at the Web site www.fingerprintbook.com. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-Beavan presents a lively focus on turn-of-the-20th-century politics and science as reflected in advances in law enforcement and criminal detection. The scientific backdrop for this slice of social history leading to the adoption of fingerprints as a forensic tool is carefully articulated within a narrative rich in the texture of locales and competitive ambitions. The author captures the role of key personalities, and the conflicts among them, as he deftly re-creates the pivotal 1905 murder case in Deptford, England, which served as a vehicle for the introduction of fingerprints as evidence in a jury trial. His research reveals how social hierarchies of the day and overlapping contributions to the field resulted in innovative work being erroneously credited. Groundwork laid by William Herschel in India; by Edward Henry and his colleague Azizul Haque; by Henry Faulds, a Scottish medical missionary in Japan; and by Francis Galton, of a prominent British family, is chronicled. The decades-long acrimony between Faulds and Galton is dramatically sketched. In counterpoint, Beavan takes care to describe the alternative methodology being simultaneously developed and implemented in France. Each of these efforts is skillfully outlined against the backdrop of law enforcement's dire need for a means of reliable identification of criminals. The author does a masterful job of documenting pressures within the criminal-justice system, dynamically authenticating them with actual case records, tracing the work of scientific investigation, and couching this quest within the specific legal and social framework of the Victorian setting.-Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A lively, fascinating recounting of how fingerprints came to be a means of criminal identification, with emphasis on the personalities, claims, and peccadilloes of the men involved. Journalist Beavan (Esquire, Atlantic Monthly, etc.) opens with the murder in 1902 of two shopkeepers in a village near London. At the trial that followed, fingerprint evidence for the first time led to the conviction of two killers, ensuring the widespread acceptance of fingerprinting as a tool of law enforcement. Ironically, Henry Faulds, who had spent years trying unsuccessfully to get Scotland Yard and other police departments around the world to adopt fingerprinting, sided with the defense, asserting that the uniqueness of a single fingerprint had never been scientifically established. Faulds, a Scottish missionary working in Japan who had observed how the Japanese used fingerprints to mark pottery, was the first to suggest fingerprinting as a method of criminal identification, proposing many of the elements of a fingerprint system in an 1880 issue of the prestigious British science journal Nature. It was ignored. When, in 1888, Darwins cousin Francis Galton, a well-known scientist, published an article on the study of fingerprints, Edward Henry, a English police chief in India, where fingerprints had for some time been used to identify signers of documents, took notice. When his assistant, Azizul Hague, developed a practical classification system based on ridge patterns, Henry, who received the credit, was recalled to London in 1901 to set up Scotland Yards fingerprint branch. While focusing much of his attention on the development of fingerprinting in England and on Fauldss struggle for recognition of his role in it, Beavan also describes the competing system of identification developed by the Frenchman Alphonse Bertillon, which was based on elaborate measurements of human body parts. (For a look at Bertillon and his early method of criminal identification, see Simon A. Cole, below.) Included, too, are dramatic cases of imposters and mistaken identity that illustrate the need for a reliable identification system. Thirty-six line drawings and halftones. Beavan admirably brings to vivid life the tangled human tale behind a technological breakthrough. (36 line drawings and halftones)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by School Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
