Cracking 2,000 cases in a 40-year career, Edward Oscar Heinrich (1881-1953) was one of America's first forensic scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing evidence, and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost supernatural. Becoming an expert witness, Heinrich spearheaded the invention of tools that police still rely upon today, including ballistics, lie-detector tests, and the use of fingerprints as courtroom evidence. Revisiting some of Heinrich's most intriguing breakthroughs, the author of Death in the Air also examines the limits of those techniques and the very human experts who wield them.

"While many true-crime books suffer from stale prose, Dawson's writing is remarkable in that it never uses the crutch of false suspense but also doesn't skimp on valuable details…. An entertaining, absorbing combination of biography and true crime."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)