Lisa Black--The Joys of Research

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I love research nerds--maybe because I am one... And when I find another author who really and truly believes that research is a joy, I know I've found a kindred soul. But Lisa Black is an honest-to-goodness certified research nerd--she's a forensic scientist who writes novels with characters who are forensic scientists. The best of both worlds, I say. Not to mention that she is a gripping story teller who puts all that research to good use.  Here's Lisa on what else but--The Joys of Research!

LISA BLACK: The surest argument against the idea that the NSA is actually reading all our emails is the fact that they have not yet shown up at my door. I write murder mysteries for a—well, not for a living certainly, but with great regularity. Among the topics I have researched online are: decapitation as method of murder, how to mix up plastic explosives in your garage, the water supply of New York City, crystal meth recipes, the system used to organize and track international shipping containers, and the location of every nuclear power plant in the United States. No one seems to have noticed. 

Yet.

Research can be the most fun part of writing, because you get to sit around reading books and tell yourself that you’re doing important, hard work. (Plus one looks quite intellectual holding a copy of Reflections on the Financial Crisis on the subway.) Sometimes it can be frustrating—I discovered, for instance, that decapitation as a method of murder is so rare outside a political realm that there simply isn’t any research on it. And in my current book, That Darkness, I found that while a truly objective vigilante such as Charles Bronson portrayed has been quite popular on the screen, they don’t actually exist in real life.

But you run across the most interesting tidbits in the annals of history. 

In Trail of Blood I researched life during the Depression. You know how in every group of years there is some trendy food that the hip people in the know are eating? Like in the 1980s it was sushi, and today it’s all these unusual grains like quinoa. In the mid-1930s it was…spaghetti. A recent import that used—scandalously—spices, it became the daring new thing. Young couples threw spaghetti parties..,much as around the time I got married everyone was making buffalo chicken wings. (There was only one recipe: 50% melted butter, 50% Red Hot. Still the best IMHO.) I imagine pasta also had the advantage of being relatively inexpensive, an important factor during the Depression. I did work this into the story, as one more desire of James Miller’s wife who felt frustrated with her husband for not taking the payoffs like the other cops. 

I also learned that education became mandatory in the U.S. partly because of experiences in the first World War. The military draft couldn’t provide enough officer candidates from its rolls--not enough young men knew how to read and write. But citizens debated mandatory education since it would also apply to children who didn’t really need it, such as minorities and, you know, girls. 

In Defensive Wounds, I discovered that those plastic cards with the magnetic strips actually come in two varieties: high density, which store information, such as your credit cards and driver’s license, and low density, which are made for simpler uses such hotel room doors. I could work that into the book, but not, alas, the story of how a man named Forest Parry invented the cards. He had the cards, he had the magnetic strip, but he couldn’t get one to stick to the other. He came home one day where his wife, like so many wives in the early 1960s, ironed clothes. She asked what had him looking so frustrated so he handed her the card and the strip. She used the iron to stick them together and voila, a technology was born. 

In my self-published e-book The Prague Project, I discovered a million fascinating facts about WWII, the secret tank factory inside a mountain, my ancestral home of Bohemia, and the tunnels under the city of Prague. But I also found that in 1960 the U.S. Army had a network of tunnels under a Greenland ice cap to house nuclear reactors and a missile complex. The idea made sense—the missiles would be close to Russia and invisible from the air, and if the reactors suffered a meltdown, well, they’d be a safe distance from any general population. [Similar to a nuclear submarine. The idea of a disaster in a populated area is why a nuclear-powered plane, pardon the pun, never got off the ground.] However glaciers in the area turned out to be moving at a not-so-glacial pace and the facilities really were very very cold, so the camp was abandoned after five years and nearly eight million dollars. 

I couldn’t work that into the book, but I did get in the meaning of ‘defenestration’—to kill someone by throwing them out a window.

Sometimes my job points me toward the research. When a detective enlisted me in the case of a fifteen year old runaway I discovered NamUs, a national missing persons database that anyone can search and add to. We did find the young girl, but I recreated the situation with a much more tragic outcome in my current book.

In That Darkness, Crime scene specialist Maggie Gardiner’s world shifts when she notices a pattern, a similarity among wildly different murder victims. Both forensics and footwork lead Maggie to an untenable conclusion, and only she can decide what she will sacrifice to do what’s right when she encounters Jack Renner, a killer who simply wants to make the world a safer place.

            But Maggie Gardiner is not safe. And, until she can draw Jack Renner into the light, neither is anyone else. 

DEBS: I'm still laughing over spaghetti... How exotic!!! And I do often wonder if someone is checking my searches. I did research white phosphorous grenades and blowing one up in St. Pancras Station for the last book. I kept waiting for Special Branch to show up on my doorstep... 

Here's more about real-life Lisa:

I spent the happiest five years of my life in a morgue. Strange, perhaps, but true. After ten years as a secretary, I went back to school to get a Bachelor's degree in Biology from Cleveland State University. In my job as a forensic scientist at the Cuyahoga County Coroner's Office, I analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, blood and many other forms of trace evidence, as well as crime scenes.

 

I had my life sorted out just the way I liked it until my husband got fed up with Cleveland snow and moved us to Florida, 1400 miles away from my family and my career. Not that I'm bitter or anything. Now I work as a latent print examiner for the city of Cape Coral, Florida, police department, working mostly with fingerprints and crime scenes.

 

I've lectured at writer's conventions and appeared on panels. In my life as a writer I'm a member of Sisters In Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. In the other half of my double life, as a forensic specialist, I'm a member of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists, the International Association for Identification, the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts and am a Certified Latent Print Examiner. I have had over 976 hours of instruction in forensic topics and have testified in court over 65 times, none of which you really care about unless you're interviewing me for a job. 

I think this is fascinating. REDS and readers, do you have the research bug? And how much of the facts do you like in your novels? 

           

Mind Your Language – a Brit on American Shores by guest blogger A.D. Garrett

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Here at JRW, we're very familiar with Americans writing about the English in Great Britain (Debs) or ex-pats writing about the Brits in their native land (Rhys.) But Brits writing an Englishwoman in Oklahoma? That's a new one.

A.D. Garrett - who is Margaret Murphy, Dagger-winning author of psychological mysteries and short stories, assisted by forensic scientist Dave Barclay -  hit it out of the park with EVERYONE LIES, the first thriller featuring DCI Kate Simms and forensics expert Prof. Nick Fennimore. Booklist compared Garrett's writing to Ken Bruen and Val McDermid, and Publisher's Weekly gave it 5 stars.

But how to follow up a dark thriller set on the gritty streets of Manchester? Send your Inspector and expert to Oklahoma, of course. Here's A.D. Garrett to tell us why BELIEVE NO ONE is set in the American west...and how researching language differences is as necessary as researching bloodstains

What do you see here – a pond, or a lake?

Your answer probably depends on whether you’re American or British. I’ve had an obsession with words since I was a kid – well, you would expect of a writer – but I am also fascinated by the differences between British and American English. When I started reading American thrillers as a young teen, I was soon hooked on the sharp dialogue of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct, and my early attempts at writing dialogue owe much to film adaptations of Ross MacDonald and Raymond Chandler.

I’d always had a hankering to set a novel in the United States, and when the opportunity arose with the second in the Fennimore & Simms series, I couldn’t wait to plant my feet on American soil. It’s often said that we are “two nations separated by a common language”, and the word “pond” was the first to illustrate the point. Oklahoma created more ponds, post-Dust Bowl than any other state, and I decided that was where the killer would dump the bodies of his victims. “You couldn’t hide a body in a pond,” my forensic advisor said. “It’d be too small.” Which was understandable because, like me, he’s a Brit, and what Brits call a pond, an American might call a puddle.

An American farm pond, on the other hand, could be up to an acre across. But this novel was already commissioned by UK and American publishers, and there’s bond of trust between writer and reader. Break that bond with what seems to be a jarring error and you risk losing them; so clearly I had to satisfy readers on both sides of the, um... Pond. I tackled that linguistic anomaly on the first page of Believe No One.

I work closely with a forensic scientist to ensure that the Fennimore & Simms thrillers are forensically accurate, and having gone to that trouble, I would surely be selling my readers short if I didn’t do justice to the colour and energy of American expression. Which is why, during our research trip, I filled three notebooks, not only with procedural details, but with snatches of dialogue, too.

The use of job titles is a much stronger tradition in the US than in the UK, but I was surprised to hear our guide, Detective Mike Nance, address Judge Tom Gillert respectfully as “Judge”. In Britain, that would be considered disrespectful. Instead, we would use “your honour’ or the positively feudal, “My lord”, which, as every Rumpole fan will know, is usually contracted to “M’lud”. At sharp end of law enforcement, the term “Billy-Bob from the backwoods” was frequently used to disparage clueless sheriffs’ deputies. In the UK, the equivalent phrase would be “PC plod” or the more culturally rich, “Woodentop”.

On the fourth day of our trip, we met District Attorney Kuester in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. The courthouse had airport-style security checks, including an X-ray gizmo, and as my handbag slid through the scanner, the security guard said, “Woah! Do you have a skeleton key in your purse, ma’am?”

I couldn’t think what she meant, but as I stammered a reply, it came to me. ‘It could be the mortise key to our back door at home.’

‘I don’t know what that is. You need to show me,’ she said. (I never heard an American apologise for not knowing something – not once – which was great when I sat down to think about characters, but was no help at all at that precise moment . . .)

I rummaged in my handbag apologising like a Brit for holding up the queue. Finally I handed the offending item it to her, and thankfully, she was satisfied. 

 

“That’s all right.” She waved me through, laughing. “But you weren’t gettin’ in there with a skeleton key in your purse.” Then she stopped me again. ‘Can you do me a favour?’ she said, lowering her voice. “Will you say bloody? I love the way you Brits say ‘bloody’.”

“I bloody well won’t,” I said, with false indignation.

She laughed uproariously. “You made my day!”

That in itself was a lesson in linguistic difference: British construction would be, “You’ve just made my day!”

Typically, a Brit would make a suggestion by saying, “Perhaps we should...” – or, more forcefully: “We really should...” which translated in the US to a far more decisive, “We need to” – as in, “We need to outlaw hand dug wells.” As my ear became attuned, I found more examples of this brevity and directness in American speech. Our hosts might ask, “Did you eat?” In British English that would be, “Have you eaten yet?” Eaten is a lovely Old English word, like chosen, or sudden, and the –en ending is still widely used, though not so commonly in the US as in the UK. Where a Brit might say, ‘She’s fallen over,’ an American is more likely to say, “She fell.” It’s a surprise, then, that Brits get so hot under the collar about the American word: “gotten” – perhaps they have forgotten, it originates from Middle English and was common usage in Britain for 600 years...?

Local dialect and geographically specific words provide crucial clues to the identity of the serial killer in Believe No One, and there’s a whole branch of forensic linguistics called “Language Pattern Analysis”. In real life, as in fiction, LPA is great at catching bad guys. In 2013 Dr Jack Grieve and Dr Tim Grant examined the emails of Jamie and Debbie Starbuck. They were purportedly on a round-the-world trip together but Jamie was suspected of having murdered his wife and of sending emails home in her name. Their analysis identified a date on which emails from Debbie Starbuck's account shifted to be consistent with Jamie's written style and Jamie Starbuck was later convicted of Debbie's murder.

Back in Blighty, I listened to Oklahoma radio stations and watched a lot of US TV series to “keep my ear in”; I even started talking with a distinct “twang”. But I still had to grapple with a British proofreader over a single word – “if”. I had a homicide detective say, “I’d put every one of them on CODIS, I had my way.” In British English the correct form would be: “I’d put every one of them on CODIS, if I had my way.” That “if” was indispensible, she argued; I insisted that the American idiom should stand. I won that one. Well, sometimes you just have to stand up for the little things in life.

Do you have a favourite Britishism – or one that you hate?

Have you been confused by British or American English usage?

I will give away a copy of BELIEVE NO ONE for my favourite comment of the day!

A.D.Garrett is the pseudonym used by novelist and Dagger Award-winning short story writer, Margaret Murphy when writing her forensic thrillers. Forensic and technical guidance for the first two novels in the series is provided by forensic scientist, Prof. Dave Barclay.

You can discover more about A.D. Garrett and read her blog at her website. You can friend her and read a day-by-day account of the "Team Garrett" US research trip on Facebook; follow her on Twitter as @adgarrett1 and check out her book trailers and interviews on her YouTube channel.

BELIEVE NO ONE is the sequel to forensic thriller EVERYONE LIES.

Detective Chief Inspector Kate Simms is on assignment in the United States with St Louis PD, reviewing cold cases, sharing expertise. Forensic expert Professor Nick Fennimore follows her, keen to pick up where they left off after their last case – but the last thing Simms needs is Fennimore complicating her life...

A call for help from a rural sheriff’s deputy takes Fennimore to Oklahoma; a welcome distraction, until he discovers the circumstances – a mother is dead, her child gone – and they’re not the only ones. How many more young mothers have been killed, how many children are unaccounted for?

Meanwhile, nine-year-old Red, adventuring in Oklahoma’s backwoods, has no clue that he and his mom are in the killer’s sights – but soon the race is on to find a serial killer and save the boy.

"Forensics: the Anatomy of Crime"

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: 'Forensics: the Anatomy of Crime,’an exhibit at the Wellcome Collection in Euston, London, explores the history, science and art of forensic medicine. It runs through the 21st of June, so if you're able to go — hurry! 


I was lucky enough to be able to go on my recent research trip to London — and it was fascinating. The exhibit's mix of history, science, and art make it both informative and also (dare I say?) entertaining, going from a blood-splattered floor to a ceramic morgue table to a Victorian death mask. (Oh, and then there's the videos of how flies infest corpses — definitely worth watching, but my advice is to do so on an empty stomach....)

Here's the official description of the exhibit:

'Forensics: the anatomy of crime’ explores the history, science and art of forensic medicine. It travels from crime scene to courtroom, across centuries and continents, exploring the specialisms of those involved in the delicate processes of collecting, analysing and presenting medical evidence. It draws out the stories of victims, suspects and investigators of violent crimes, and our enduring cultural fascination with death and detection.

The exhibition contains original evidence, archival material, photographic documentation, film footage, forensic instruments and specimens, and is rich with artworks offering both unsettling and intimate responses to traumatic events. Challenging familiar views of forensic medicine shaped by fictions that came out of the sensational reporting of late Victorian murder cases and popular crime dramas, ‘Forensics’ highlights the complex entwining of law and medicine, and the scientific methods it calls upon and creates.

The exhibit starts with "Forensic Etymology: the Crime Scene," 

moves on to "Examining the Body and Post-Mortum: the Morgue," 

then goes on to "Analyzing Forensic Evidence: the Laboratory," 

to "Human Identification: the Search," 

to "Forensic Evidence and Expertise in Court: the Courtroom." 

All aspects of the exhibit were excellent, but —perhaps not surprisingly — I was most interested in forensic science used in the 1930s and 1940s. The objects and photographs I spent the most time with were Frances Glessner Lee's "Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death" — which looked to me at first like dollhouses gone terribly, terribly wrong. (Also, who's heard of Frances Gleaner Lee? What a remarkable woman!)

But, in actuality, Lee's creations are a series of one-inch to one-foot scale models of crime scenes that were created in the 1940s as training aids for the Chicago Police. Truly, they are works of macabre beauty, which isn't undercut at all by their practical application.

And then there's also the accompanying book by crime writer Val McDermid. Here's the description:

The dead talk. To the right listener, they tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died - and who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help justice to be done using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene or the faintest of human traces. Forensics uncovers the secrets of forensic medicine, drawing on interviews with top-level professionals, ground-breaking research and Val McDermid's own experience to lay bare the secrets of this fascinating science. And, along the way, she wonders at how maggots collected from a corpse can help determine time of death, how a DNA trace a millionth the size of a 

Val McDermid

grain of salt can be used to convict a killer and how a team of young Argentine scientists led by a maverick American anthropologist uncovered the victims of a genocide. 

In her crime novels, Val McDermid has been solving complex crimes and confronting unimaginable evil for years. Now, she's looking at the people who do it for real, and real crime scenes. It's a journey that will take her to war zones, fire scenes and autopsy suites, and bring her into contact with extraordinary bravery and wickedness, as she traces the history of forensics from its earliest beginnings to the cutting-edge science of the modern day. Published in partnership with the Wellcome Collection, a free visitor destination that explores the connections between medicine, life and art.

Reds and lovely readers, when you read mysteries and thrillers, are you more interested in the forensics or the characters? Or both equally? And if forensics, why? Historic or cutting-edge?

And if you could curate a mystery-related exhibit at a museum, what would it be and why? Please tell us in the comments!

Politically Correct Policing by Tom Adair

LUCY BURDETTE: Today we are fortunate to have Tom Adair, a retired, internationally recognized, forensic scientist/CSI in Colorado, visiting our blog. He has a new blog on forensics for writers and some very interesting pet peeves and opinions on getting things right--and wrong! Welcome Tom!


TOM ADAIR: As a forensic scientist you have to confront a lot of unpleasant and nasty things; not the least of which is politics. Political influence can take many forms from benign (yet annoying) new uniform policies to outright interference with a criminal investigation. It varies from agency to agency too, popping its head up like a traveling circus in town to get their freak on. I like to think I'm a pretty simple, straight forward guy. Being a CSI is tough enough so when confronted with goofy obstacles I tend to react negatively. Such is the case with political correctness.
As authors you can use these kinds of issues to inject a little tension with or between characters. They can also help you shape your characters values and add some fun dialog. Here are a few brief examples.

"We treat all deaths as Homicides"

This is a quaint little mantra that sounds like you're really serious about solving a case right? It's commonly offered up at press conferences by high ranking law enforcement officers trying to assure the public they are taking the case seriously. The problem I have always had with the phrase is that it implies a bias. When I would write a preliminary report (prior to autopsy findings, toxicology, etc.) I would always list the classification as simply a death investigation. That's it. As a scientist I'm supposed to remain neutral and go where the evidence leads me. But if I begin with the assumption the death is a homicide (presumably until evidence proves otherwise) then I may be setting myself up to miss red flags suggesting suicide or staging.

The Bunny Suit

These are the full body Tyvek suits that are really common in Europe and during high profile cases with a lot of media attention. They're uncomfortable and they tear pretty easily and I've generally only worn them to protect myself from some hazard at the crime scene. But a lot of agencies require their CSIs to wear these suits on homicide scenes to "prevent" contamination. The funny thing is that you'll almost never see anyone wearing these suits at burglary scenes, recovered stolen vehicles, or other "low profile" crimes. Additionally, the first responders won't wear these suits upon first discovering the scene. So one would expect to find a bunch of contamination present at these other scenes right (after all, they didn't protect the scene in these funny looking suits)? The fact of the matter is you don't because normal evidence handling procedures prevent contamination but they just don't look as good on the live broadcast of the evening news.

A Person of Interest

This is a favorite of mine. Admittedly, a pretty minor thing but just annoying as hell. Again, this is a classic statement offered up by high ranking officials at press conferences. Just once I'd love to hear a reporter ask the official to define and differentiate a "person of interest" with a "suspect". I'd buy a tub of popcorn for that show. Obviously if you're interested in a person relative to a crime you suspect they may have had something to do with it don't you? Are they really worried that they'll offend the wife-beating dirt bag husband by suggesting he might have had something to do with the disappearance of his wife?

Unfortunately there are too many other examples to mention here. Needless to say, you can use some of these types of issues to spice up some scenes and create explosive dialog between characters (usually those issuing the orders and those following them). Imagine how morale can plummet if the lead detective is reprimanded for calling the parents suspects in the death of their sweet newborn baby. What kind of message will that send to the other characters and how aggressively will they pursue new leads? Play around with some issues and see if they work for you. You may be surprised how well these scene mirror real life events.

LUCY: See I've already learned things--like "the person of interest" phrase which is unfortunately riddled all through my new book! But it's not too late for you Reds--Tom will stop in over the day to answer your questions...