Written in Blood

Extraordinary accounts of forensic crime detection—from poisoners in ancient Rome to modern day serial killers—by the bestselling author of The Outsider.

In 44 BC, a Roman doctor named Antistius performed the first autopsy recorded in history—on the corpse of murder victim Julius Caesar. However, not until the nineteenth century did the systematic application of scientific knowledge to crime detection seriously begin, so that the tiniest scrap of evidence might yield astonishing results—l...