Best Forensic Science Law Books

Here you will get Best Forensic Science Law Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.

1. Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime

Author: by Val McDermid
B00PSSG3UK
Grove Press
July 7, 2015

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Bestselling author of Broken Ground offers fascinating glimpses into the real world of criminal forensics from its beginnings to the modern day (The Boston Globe). The dead can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them.

Using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces, forensic scientists unlock the mysteries of the past and serve justice. In Forensics, international bestselling crime author Val McDermid guides readers through this field, drawing on interviews with top-level professionals, ground-breaking research, and her own experiences on the scene.

Along the way, McDermid discovers how maggots collected from a corpse can help determine one’s time of death; how a DNA trace a millionth the size of a grain of salt can be used to convict a killer; and how a team of young Argentine scientists led by a maverick American anthropologist were able to uncover the victims of a genocide.


2. What Happened to Paula: On the Death of an American Girl

Author: by Katherine Dykstra
B08L6YYFVN
June 15, 2021
English

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A People Best Book of SummerA New York Times Most Anticipated Book of the SummerA riveting investigation into a cold case asks how much control women have over their bodies and the direction of their lives.July 1970. Eighteen-year-old Paula Oberbroeckling left her house in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Four months later, her remains were discovered just beyond the mouth of a culvert overlooking the Cedar River. Her homicide has never been solved. Fifty years cold, Paula’s case had been mostly forgotten when journalist Katherine Dykstra began looking for answers.A woman was dead.

Why had no one been held responsible? How could the powers that be, how could a community, have given up? Tracing Paula’s final days, Dykstra uncovers a girl whose exultant personality was at odds with the Midwest norms of the late 1960s.

A girl who was caught between independence and youthful naivete, between a love that defied racially segregated Cedar Rapids and her complicated but enduring love for her mother, and between a possible pregnancy and the freedoms that had been promised by the women’s liberation movement but that still had little practical bearing on actual lives.


3. Forensic Science: Fundamentals & Investigations

Author: by Anthony J. Bertino
Cengage Learning
English
704 pages

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With today’s popular television programs about criminal justice and crime scene investigation and the surge of detective movies and books, students often have a passion for exploring forensic science. Now you can guide that excitement into a profitable learning experience with the help of the innovative, new FORENSIC SCIENCE: FUNDAMENTALS AND INVESTIGATIONS, 2E.

This dynamic, visually powerful text has been carefully crafted to ensure solid scientific content and an approach that delivers precisely what you need for your high school course. Now an established best-seller, FORENSIC SCIENCE: FUNDAMENTALS AND INVESTIGATIONS, 2E offers a truly experiential approach that engages students in active learning and emphasizes the application of integrated science in your course.

Student materials combine math, chemistry, biology, physics, and earth science with content aligned to the National Science Education Standards, clearly identified by icons. This book balances extensive scientific concepts with hands-on classroom and lab activities, readings, intriguing case studies, and chapter-opening scenarios.


4. Spitz and Fisher's Medicolegal Investigation of Death

Author: by Werner U. Spitz
English
768 pages
0398093121

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This is not just a new edition but a different book, emphasizing trauma and wound analysis. The addition of a new co-editor, Dr. Francisco J. Diaz, has brought new ideas to this fifth edition. A chapter by Doctor Jan Leetsma, world-renowned neuropathologist, has also been included.

Doctor Leetsmas vast experience in forensic neuropathology will certainly enhance this book. Several chapters have been eliminated that are no longer applicable or which are adequately covered in other publications. Over time, in the past 48 years, since this book was first published, Medicolegal Investigation of Death has been dubbed the Bible of Forensic Pathology.

The fifth edition includes over 600 case reports and hundreds of color photographs. The cases are from files the authors have personally handled. According to author Spitz, We have found many times analysis of small wounds will lead to understanding of a giant caselike the case in Hawaii, where a body was found under a full-size van, with a thread mark on the cheek consistent with having been hit with a black pipe used for gas lines that were found in a bucket in the rear of the van.


5. The Killer Across the Table: Unlocking the Secrets of Serial Killers and Predators with the FBI's Original Mindhunter

Author: by John E. Douglas
Dey Street Books
English
352 pages

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The legendary FBI criminal profiler, number-one New York Times bestselling author, and inspiration for the hit Netflix show Mindhunter delves deep into the lives and crimes of four of the most disturbing and complex predatory killers, offering never-before-revealed details about his profiling process, and divulging the strategies used to crack some of America’s most challenging cases.

The FBI’s pioneer of criminal profiling, former special agent John Douglas, has studied and interviewed many of America’s most notorious killersincluding Charles Manson, Son of Sam Killer David Berkowitz and BTK Strangler Dennis Radertrained FBI agents and investigators around and the world, and helped educate the country about these deadly predators and how they operate, and has become a legend in popular culture, fictionalized in The Silence of the Lambs and the hit television shows Criminal Minds and Mindhunter.

Twenty years after his famous memoir, the man who literally wrote the book on FBI criminal profiling opens his case files once again. In this riveting work of true crime, he spotlights four of the most diabolical criminals he’s confronted, interviewed and learned from.


6. Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI

Author: by Robert K. Ressler
St. Martin's Paperbacks
English
304 pages

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LEARN THE TRUE STORY OF ONE OF THE FBI PROFILERS WHO COINED THE PHRASE “SERIAL KILLER”Face-to-face with some of America’s most terrifying killers, FBI veteran Robert K. Ressler learned how to identify the unknown monsters who walk among us – and put them behind bars.

In Whoever Fights Monsters, Resslerthe inspiration for the character Agent Bill Tench in David Fincher’s hit TV show Mindhuntershows how he was able to track down some of the country’s most brutal murderers. Ressler, the FBI Agent and ex-Army CID colonel who advised Thomas Harris on The Silence of the Lambs, used the evidence at a crime scene to put together a psychological profile of the killers.

From the victims they choose to the way they kill to the often grotesque souvenirs they take with themRessler unlocks the identities of these vicious killers. And with his discovery that serial killers share certain violent behaviors, Ressler goes behind prison walls to hear bizarre first-hand stories from countless convicted murderers, including Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy; Edmund Kemper; and Son of Sam.


7. Criminal Investigation

Author: by Kären M. Hess
1285862619
Cengage Learning
English

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Easy to read and well-organized, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION, 11th Edition delivers a practical, field-based approach to the modern investigative principles and practices you need to succeed in criminal justice. Demonstrating techniques and their many applications, the book introduces long-standing tools, practices, and policies alongside the latest innovations in technology and science to give you a broad perspective of criminal investigations today.

Topics covered include D.N.A. Science, terrorism and homeland security, cybercrime, crimes against children, forensics and physical evidence, investigative photography and sketching, identity theft, white-collar crime, ethics, and many others. Examples and case citations show how investigations affect the world around you.

The MindTap that accompanies this text guides you through your course and includes video cases, career scenarios, visual summaries, and interactive labs that allow you to explore investigative techniques.


8. Chase Darkness with Me: How One True-Crime Writer Started Solving Murders

Author: by Billy Jensen
B07T7YVN1X
August 13, 2019
English

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New York Times Bestseller*With an exclusive behind-the-scenes conversation between Billy Jensen and retired detective Paul Holes on the Golden State Killer, their favorite cold cases, and more*Have you ever wanted to solve a murder? Gather the clues the police overlooked?

Put together the pieces? Identify the suspect? Journalist Billy Jensen spent fifteen years investigating unsolved murders, fighting for the families of victims. Every story he wrote had one thing in common-they didn’t have an ending. The killer was still out there.

But after the sudden death of a friend, crime writer and author of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara, Billy became fed up. Following a dark night, he came up with a plan. A plan to investigate past the point when the cops had given up.

A plan to solve the murders himself. You’ll ride shotgun as Billy identifies the Halloween Mask Murderer, finds a missing girl in the California Redwoods, and investigates the only other murder in New York City on 9/11. You’ll hear intimate details of the hunts for two of the most terrifying serial killers in history: his friend Michelle McNamara’s pursuit of the Golden State Killer and his own quest to find the murderer of the Allenstown Four.


9. Guide To Computer Forensics and Investigations – Standalone Book

Author: by Bill Nelson
Cengage Learning
English
688 pages

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NOTE: This book is a standalone book and will not include any access codes. Master the skills you need to conduct a successful digital investigation with Nelson/Phillips/Steuart’s GUIDE TO COMPUTER FORENSICS AND INVESTIGATIONS, Sixth Edition-the most comprehensive forensics resource available.

While other books offer just an overview of the field, this hands-on learning text provides clear instruction on the tools and techniques of the trade, walking you through every step of the computer forensics investigation-from lab setup to testifying in court.

It also explains how to use current forensics software and provides demo downloads. It includes the most up-to-date coverage available of Linux and Macintosh, virtual machine software such as VMware and Virtual Box, Android, mobile devices, handheld devices, cloud forensics, email, social media and the Internet of Anything.

With its practical applications, you can immediately put what you learn into practice.

10. The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism: The ISIS Edition

Author: by Trevor Aaronson
Ig Publishing
English
284 pages

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Compelling, shocking, and gritty with intrigue. Publishers Weekly (starred review) A real eye-opener that questions how well the country’s security is being protected. Kirkus (starred review) A groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, The Terror Factory: The Isis Edition exposes how the FBI has, under the guise of engaging in counterterrorism since 9/11, built a network of more than 15,000 informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the Bureau can then claim it is winning the war on terror.

This updated edition of The Terror Factory examines the FBI’s use of stings to catch ISIS sympathizers in the United States, as well as how the bureau, already transformed into an intelligence agency whose tactics are similar to those of the CIA and NSA, has and will change under the presidency of Donald Trump.

Trevor Aaronson is a contributing writer at The Intercept and executive director of the nonprofit Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. Previously, he was a reporter with Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit and a fellow at the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley.

11. Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

Author: by William Bass
Berkley
English
320 pages

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Fans of the forensics-oriented novels of such mystery writers as Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwell… Not to mention television series like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, will make an eager audience for this one. BooklistOn a patch of land in the Tennessee hills, human corpses decompose in the open air, aided by insects, bacteria, and birds, unhindered by coffins or mausoleums.

This is Bill Bass’s Body Farm, where nature takes its course as bodies buried in shallow graves, submerged in water, or locked in car trunks serve the needs of science and the cause of justice. In Death’s Acre, Bass invites readers on an unprecedented journey behind the gates of the Body Farm where he revolutionized forensic anthropology.

A master scientist and an engaging storyteller, Bass reveals his most intriguing cases for the first time. He revisits the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder, explores the mystery of a headless corpse whose identity astonished police, divulges how the telltale traces of an insect sent a murderous grandfather to death rowand much more.

12. The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death

Author: by Corinne May Botz
English
225 pages
1580931456

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The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death offers readers an extraordinary glimpse into the mind of a master criminal investigator. Frances Glessner Lee, a wealthy grandmother, founded the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard in 1936 and was later appointed captain in the New Hampshire police.

In the 1940s and 1950s she built dollhouse crime scenes based on real cases in order to train detectives to assess visual evidence. Still used in forensic training today, the eighteen Nutshell dioramas, on a scale of 1:12, display an astounding level of detail: pencils write, window shades move, whistles blow, and clues to the crimes are revealed to those who study the scenes carefully.

Corinne May Botz’s lush color photographs lure viewers into every crevice of Frances Lee’s models and breathe life into these deadly miniatures, which present the dark side of domestic life, unveiling tales of prostitution, alcoholism, and adultery. The accompanying line drawings, specially prepared for this volume, highlight the noteworthy forensic evidence in each case.

13. Psychological Evaluations for the Courts, Fourth Edition: A Handbook for Mental Health Professionals and Lawyers

Author: by Gary B. Melton
1462532667
The Guilford Press
English

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Tens of thousands of readers have relied on this leading text and practitioner reference-now revised and updated-to understand the issues the legal system most commonly asks mental health professionals to address. The volume demystifies the forensic psychological assessment process and provides guidelines for participating effectively and ethically in legal proceedings.

Presented are clinical and legal concepts and evidence-based assessment procedures pertaining to criminal and civil competencies, the insanity defense and related doctrines, sentencing, civil commitment, personal injury claims, antidiscrimination laws, child custody, juvenile justice, and other justice-related areas. Case examples, exercises, and a glossary facilitate learning; 19 sample reports illustrate how to conduct and write up thorough, legally admissible evaluations.

New to This Edition *Extensively revised to reflect important legal, empirical, and clinical developments. Increased attention to medical and neuroscientific research. New protocols relevant to competence, risk assessment, child custody, and mental injury evaluations. Updates on insanity, sentencing, civil commitment, the Americans with Disabilities Act, Social Security, juvenile and family law, and the admissibility of expert testimony.

14. Criminal Investigation (Justice Series) (The Justice Series)

Author: by Michael Lyman
013454868X
Pearson
English

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Brief.Affordable.Visual. Part of the groundbreaking Justice Series, Criminal Investigation is a clear, thought-provoking exploration of core concepts, the latest research, and current events shaping criminal investigation today. Built to be affordable without sacrificing academic rigor, the series uses eye-catching visuals and conversation-starting pedagogy to move students beyond memorization to true understanding.

Blending scientific theory with a practical approach, Lyman presents content in a logical flow paralleling the steps and considerations observed within an actual criminal investigation. The 3rd edition includes updated case studies, revised learning outcomes, and new graphics, photos, and informational boxes providing context and promoting student engagement.

Criminal Investigation, 3rd Edition, is also available via Revel, an interactive learning environment that enables students to read, practice, and study in one continuous experience.

15. Criminalistics: An Introduction to Forensic Science

Author: by Richard Saferstein
Pearson
English
576 pages

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For introductory courses in Forensic Science and Crime Scene Investigation A clear introduction to the technology of the modern crime laboratory for non-scientists Criminalistics: An Introduction to Forensic Science, Twelfth Edition, uses clear writing, case stories, and modern technology to capture the pulse and fervor of forensic science investigations.

Written for readers with no scientific background, only the most relevant scientific and technological concepts are presented. The nature of physical evidence is defined, and the limitations that technology and current knowledge impose on its individualization and characterization are examined.

A major portion of the text centers on discussions of the common items of physical evidence encountered at crime scenes. Particular attention is paid to the meaning and role of probability in interpreting the evidential significance of scientifically evaluated evidence.

Updated throughout, the Twelfth Edition includes a new chapter on the exciting field of forensic biometrics. With its easy-to-understand writing and straightforward presentation, this best-selling text is clear and comprehensible to a wide variety of students.

16. Cold Cases: A True Crime Collection: Unidentified Serial Killers, Unsolved Kidnappings, and Mysterious Murders (Including the Zodiac Killer, Natalee … the Golden State Killer and More)

Author: by Cheyna Roth
Ulysses Press
English
280 pages

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Discover the fascinating true crime stories of JonBent Ramsey, the Black Dahlia, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft, the Amber Alert case, the Cleveland Torso Murders, and morea must-read for murderinos, armchair detectives, and online sleuths of all kinds! From mystifying heists to shocking murders, Cold Cases: A True Crime Collection features case file facts, fascinating details, and chilling testimonies of the world’s most famous cold cases.

Written for true crime junkies who love to speculate on the facts and theories surrounding their favorite cases, this book reads like you’re having a conversation with a friend or listening to your favorite crime podcast. Each chapter delves deep into the facts, while also illuminating the many theories surrounding these mysteriously fascinating cases: – The Zodiac Killer – The disappearance of Natalee Holloway – The murder of JonBent Ramsey – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist – The Kingsbury Run murders, aka the Cleveland Torso murders – The Black Dahlia murder – The Freeway Phantom murders – D.B.