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Re: forensic questions Sure, that's the easiest part. When the officer pulls you over, you roll down your window, hold your drivers license in your hand until he asks for it, hand it to him politely, look him straight in the eye, and say something to the effect of: "I know why you stopped me...

Re: forensic questions :lol: Yeah, well, the officer should have let me know he was leaving, but he had a good excuse (another officer was in trouble and needed assistance ASAP) ... and I should have checked my radio first to make sure I was transmitting only to the Watch Commander and not...

Re: forensic questions Different agencies are going to have different requirements for their civilian CSIs [sworn CSIs will have to meet the basic requirements of being a law enforcement officer], but there's no reason I can think of why you'd need a 4-year degree to properly work a scene and...

I can't remember ever using a presumptive test (like phenolphthalein) for blood or anything else at a crime scene. Wet/dried blood is pretty easy to recognize and distinguish from other wet/dried 'non-blood' materials at a scene; the presumptive tests waste/destroy a portion of the evidence...

The technologies in the CSI shows (especially those involving the sharpening of blurred images) are very definitely exaggerated for dramatic effect.

There are certainly no professional reasons to prevent a person with a physical or medical disability from becoming a forensic scientist. In point of fact, I have two good friends in the profession who battle very challenging disabilities every day: one is deaf and the other is blind.

Re: forensic questions Ummm, yes and no. This is an interesting area where the incorrect usage of terms by TV script writers and the multiple-uses of terms by law enforcement agencies merge ... and cause confusion. To start with the correct law enforcement terms: in the US, there are four...

Re: fibers/ washing the mouth Sorry, would have replied to your query earlier, but I was in Washington DC attending an American Academy of Forensics Sciences meeting. Hundreds of pathologists and many variations of forensic scientists all in one convention center, and hundreds of presentations...

I'm sure my editors would prefer to receive a manuscript with a minimal amount of spelling and grammatical errors that they have to catch; but that is what they get paid to do ... in addition to putting up with eccentric/ornery writers, of course. :lol: And it's nice to hear that you're...

Re: the future of CSI One of my 'generalist criminalist' jobs back in the late sixties and early seventies was firearms examiner. I don't recall the .44-Mag ranges for GSRs, but I'm guessing that you'd stop getting deposits around the four-foot distance from barrel to target, depending upon the...

Agreed ... so to amend my early post: thank you kindly, Victor! I really did --- and still do --- appreciate your comments and concerns when I was setting out to write IN EXTREMIS. It really does help to get honest and straight-forward input from thoughtful readers. However, as a bit of an...

:lol: No, fortunately, the CSIs don't have to try to analyse DNA samples in between all their other work at the scene [and, being the collectors of evidence, they really shouldn't examine/analyse their own evidence ... that should be done by an unbiased scientist at the lab]. All the CSIs have...

Re: the future of CSI I think it would have to be a pretty fuzzy or ragged glove to leave fibers in the drying blood smear; but such fibers might be worth looking for, especially if you were hoping to find that glove (ideally still bearing the individualistic bloodstains!).

Re: the future of CSI Well, if the glove was three-dimensionally irregular enought to leave a pattern in the blood smear, you would probably spot it with an indirect light source (angled flashlight). I really doubt that you'd see anything other than a vague outline of a glove using luminol...

Thank you kindly, sir! BTW, to the other readers/posters: please don't let the fact that I'm engaged with this web site stop you from making whatever comments you might want to make re IN EXTREMIS, positive or negative. You have every right to your opinions, and authors like myself aren't going...

Ah, thank you, Elsie! :lol: I have to confess that my initial expectation --- when offered the opportunity to write a book based on the CSI Las Vegas characters --- was exactly what you said: all I needed to do was give the readers a couple of possibly-entwined crime scenes and some...

Re: the future of CSI It definitely takes some skill to apply just enough Luminol to the substrate/surface so as not to cause the visualized patterns to streak. Unfortunately, I never seemed to acquire that skill because most of my visualized patterns did streak ... and I never really got that...

Re: the future of CSI Essentially, the blood cells have to be lysed (broken) for the reagent to react with the trace amounts of iron in hemoglobin; and drying is a great way to lyse the cells. As a side note: because luminol is such a non-specific indicator for blood, we would only use it as a...

Re: the future of CSI Not sure I fully understand the question. The Luminol procedure is typically used to visualize trace amounts of (often diluted) blood on an otherwise concealing backdrop so that the spatter pattern becomes visible to the naked eye. An example might be a suspected but...

Re: the future of CSI Ooops, forgot to define one of my terms in my last post here. In the US, a "sworn" officer is defined as an individual to takes an oath (hand raised, "I hereby swear ...) to uphold/enforce the laws of the land, and is thereby authorized --- by the law enforcement agency...