| 商家名称 | 信用等级 | 购买信息 | 订购本书 |
 |
 |
Pointing From the Grave: A True Story of Murder and DNA |  |
 |
|
Pointing From the Grave: A True Story of Murder and DNA | |
In 1984, Helena Greenwood, a young British DNA scientist, was sexually assaulted in her San Francisco cottage. A year later and 500 miles south, she was strangled to death. The alleged rapist, Paul Frediani, was the prime suspect, but police and forensic experts failed to link him to the murder. The crime was consigned to the cold case file.
Over the next fifteen years, Frediani continued his life ? with a job, children, and apparently nothing to tie him to Greenwood?s death. Scientists, meanwhile, were beginning to use DNA to unravel the riddle of human identity. Their discoveries beat a path from the laboratory to the courtroom. In 1999, this prompted a determined San Diego detective, Laura Heilig, to reopen the Greenwood file, where she discovered a vital clue.
Like a classic thriller, this is a tale of twists and turns. From crime scene to courtroom, laboratory bench to prison cell, Pointing from the Grave is the unforgettable story of how a dead woman?s groundbreaking work pointed the finger at her own murderer.
作者简介 SAMANTHA WEINBERG is the author of A Fish Caught in Time: the Search for the Coelacanth and Last of the Pirates: the Search for Bob Denard. She lives a nomadic existence between California and England.
媒体推荐 "An expertly told, deeply satisfying account of a rotten crime solved by chemical sleuthing." -- Kirkus Reviews
"Fascinating stuff...(a) thoroughly researched account." -- Washington Post Book World
专业书评 From Publishers Weekly
Weaving together cutting-edge genetics and forensic criminology, courtroom drama and multiple perspectives, Weinberg's book is an ambitious and riveting tale of crime and the science that has been developed to counter it. In 1984, Helena Greenwood, a chemical pathologist and successful executive in the burgeoning biotech industry, is sexually assaulted in her San Francisco home. Paul Frediani is eventually arrested as the primary suspect-after he is caught exposing himself to a 13-year-old girl. But following the initial arraignment, Greenwood is found viciously murdered in the front yard of her new home in Southern California. Lacking conclusive evidence, the police store Greenwood's bloodied clothing and fingernail clippings in Ziploc bags, the case is shelved and the murder goes unsolved for 15 years. Although this crime is not as sensationalistic as some, Weinberg plucks out the gripping details and fortifies her account with a crisp history of DNA, from Watson and Crick's discovery of the double helix to the pitched legal battles over the validity of DNA evidence. Weinberg (A Fish Caught in Time) is at her best when she is the beat-stomping journalist faithfully letting her well-chosen story tell itself. She is far less assured, however, with hard-hitting metaphors ("One by one, she picks up Bartick's points, then neutralizes them, as if killing mosquitoes with a giant can of Doom"), and least successful when she tries to write herself melodramatically into the story: "I have been sucked into the spinning spirals, and even if I wanted to jump out, I do not think I could." Thankfully, Weinberg rarely gets in the way.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
