American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI

From acclaimed author Douglas Preston, comes the riveting story of the birth of criminal investigation in the 20th century.

Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with curiosities, sat Edward Oscar Heinrich, an investigator known as the “American Sherlock Holmes.” With an uncanny knack for finding clues and establishing evidence, Heinrich cracked at least two thousand cases in his forty-year career.

Heinrich, one of America’s first forensic scientists, spearheaded the invention of new forensic tools like blood spatter analysis, ballistics, lie-detector tests, and fingerprints as courtroom evidence. His brilliance and commanding presence changed the course of American criminal investigation.

Based on years of research and thousands of primary sources, American Sherlock captures Heinrich’s life and the limits of his techniques.

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