Sisters in Crime, the professional crime writers’ organization, sponsored a program in October entitled “Forensic Psychology 101: What Crime Writers Should Know” with Dr. Katherine Ramsland. It featured everything you’d want to know about forensics, starting investigations, who signs death certificates, autopsies, etc. It was an incredible program. Dr. Ramsland is a forensic psychologist, and given her experience, is the real deal for understanding and explaining forensics in a way that authors can use. Through her work, authors can get the forensics right.
What Writers Often Get Wrong
I don’t focus so much on death in my novels, nor on the forensics, but I’ve seen mistakes made by authors or screenwriters who do. For example, how any times have we seen Ducky or Jimmy Palmer from NCIS declare the time of death to within an hour after using only a liver temperature probe? Determining estimated time of death is much more complicated than that, given the weather, storage conditions, humidity and even the overall health of the victim. Yet we’re encouraged to see these answers as conclusive evidence, which misleads our readers
I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog, regarding DNA evidence when I learned that DNA evidence night not come back to a detective for sixteen months! And how about other evidence such as toothmarks, decomposition and blood spatter? I’ve watched “Forensic Files” and seen blood spatter experts testify time and time again that the blood spatter proved this or that, yet theconversation.com website notes in their Take Pity post that blood spatter often isn’t so conclusive. So what’s an author to do?
How We Can Make it Right
It’s important for us to be fair to those on the front lines of crime detection and investigation. If our novels have a primary focus on the forensics, we have to get them right, with all the inconclusive leads and confusing data that implies. For those like me who don’t use forensics to drive the story, I’d say add the appropriate forensic information then move on to other matters such as using informants, and good old fashioned shoe leather. We’ve been conditioned to rely so much on forensics, the reading public may not realize how much an experienced detective can learn by the questions they ask witnesses and suspects, long before conclusive forensic evidence comes in. Perhaps that’s the greatest strength of our craft, by imbuing our detectives with the talents and experience to reveal a compelling story. And isn’t that our primary job anyway?
