Planting Clues: David Gibson ***

The pedants amongst us have to start by raising an eyebrow at the subtitle (supertitle?) 'how plants solve crimes'. Plants do not solve crimes - people solve crimes. What was intended was more 'how plants are used by forensic scientists to help them solve crimes' - but I suppose that's not so snappy.

In theory, this should be a page turner as a book as it combines science with real-life drama. We're told a fair number of true crime stories where plants have been used as vital evidence. But, unfortunately, David Gibson does not have a flair for storytelling and it all comes across as rather flat. It doesn't help that there's such a focus on US law, with only passing references to Europe/UK - and most puzzling of all, on a regular basis a story will start with something like 'In 1997, Merle and Nicky Merlaue (not their real names) bought waterfront property...' Why don't we get their real names? Presumably the court cases are a matter of public record. And if there really is a reason for not using someone's names, why name them at all? It's just irritating.

There is some genuinely interesting material here on the way that everything from diatoms in a drowned person's bone marrow (that was the one I found most fascinating - it shows if someone was alive when immersed) to the DNA of a specific plant has been used to help bring a criminal to justice or to settle a legal case. Gibson gives us some historical context and compares the early attempts with what's now possible - but also emphasises the limits of appropriate expertise. But, after a while, the different plant identifying methods and how they are used to place someone at a scene get a little repetitive.

Almost as if recognising this, the book finishes with two long chapters that aren't really quite the same thing. One is about poisons (where the distinction between plant and non-plant is not really significant), and the other about people importing plants that they shouldn't. Admittedly this one does involve plant-based forensics, but it's harder to get excited about a garden centre having illegal purple loosestrife on sale, compared with plant residue providing evidence that will help solve a murder.

You can't fault Gibson's enthusiasm for the subject - and I suspect would-be botanists will enjoy it, while murder mystery writers will gain some excellent ideas for methods that their CSI teams can use. Unfortunately, though, I never really found the book engaging.

Hardback:

Kindle:
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...

Zero Degrees of Empathy [The Science of Evil] – Simon Baron-Cohen ***

I’ve been a real fan of previous books by Simon Baron-Cohen like The Essential Difference , so opening this was one was a pleasant prospect. What I found was a book that wasn’t bad … but that could have been a lot better. I got the impression of a book that had been rushed out without a lot of work going into it. The thesis at the heart of the book – that one of the important ‘circuits’ of the brain is the one dealing with empathy, and that individuals sit on an empathy spectrum, with some residing at zero degrees of empathy – is an interesting one. Baron-Cohen introduces us to three key personality types he defines as ‘zero-negative’ including psychopaths, plus types that are ‘zero-positive’ like those with Asperger’s. In a way both of these definitions are odd, in that his zero-negatives can actually have a lot of the kind of empathy that involves being able to read another person’s emotional state, and his zero-negatives can have a lot of the kind of empathy i...

Search This Blog