A friend of McDermid, pioneering forensic anthropologist Sue Black developed her special skills while working in Kosovo, collaborating with forensic experts from Argentina who had found ways to identify the skeletal remains of the "disappeared." Black spent four years poring over bones to return remains of war victims to families for burial.
Digital forensics is a relatively new field, and McDermid quotes Jeffrey Barlow, who says the rapid development of internet technology "has complicated mystery plotting because so much more information is available to both the sleuth and the reader."
Mystery writers also make good use of forensic psychology. Motive and modus operandi feature in stories that portray the psychology of repeat offenders. In McDermid's opus, Tony Hill is a skilled profiler who helps police officer Carol Jordan: he can infer much about a perpetrator from a crime scene. The TV series Wire in the Blood is based on these characters.
Forensics is a rapidly developing field, with new techniques constantly coming into play. Yet each time researchers come up with innovative tools to carry out legitimate and socially beneficial tasks, criminals find ways around them. In the beginning of fingerprinting, they used gloves as an anti-forensic technique. Now they eradicate digital data or store it in the cloud. This creates a variety of challenges for law enforcement personnel needing to access it.
Another issue of increasing concern is the fact that now adversarial jury trials often require expert witnesses as well as expensive lawyers. This makes it harder than ever to ensure equal access to the financial resources necessary to launch an effective legal defence.
Forensics is a fascinating work. Reminding readers that there can be no contact without some trace, Val McDermid shares some sense of the very real science that underpins her stories, and points out the related social issues as well.
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