Showing results by author "Nigel McCrery" in All Categories

With a boom in cold-blooded cases throughout the 1980s, police began to rely on DNA evidence to help them find perpetrators, and since then forensic science has taken off as a powerful tool in solving murders. Best-selling true-crime author Wensley Clarkson takes us beyond the headlines to examine the real-life stories where forensics have played a crucial role. He speaks to experts who have worked on the most gruesome, most chilling and most shocking crime scenes and explains how notorious criminal cases from across the world were solved.

A crime scene. A murder. A mystery. The most important person on the scene? The forensic scientist. And yet the intricate details of their work remains a mystery to most of us. Silent Witnesses looks at the history of forensic science over the last two centuries, during which time a combination of remarkable intuition, painstaking observation, and leaps in scientific knowledge have developed this fascinating branch of detection.

A woman screams in pain. Twenty-seven times, until she dies. The sound file was sent to DCI Mark Lapslie from an anonymous email address. Why is she screaming? Why would someone record that horrifying noise? And why send it to him? He soon learns that the file was sent from the hospital where he is being treated for synaesthesia - a neurological condition that cross-wires his senses so he tastes sound - and where his new girlfriend works.

DCI Mark Lapslie suffers from a rare neurological condition that ‘cross-wires’ his senses. The sickening clamour of sounds he can taste has smothered his marriage and stifled his career...and it’s getting worse. His colleagues have written him off as a drunk – or worse – and Lapslie has quarantined himself in an isolated Essex cottage. Carl Whittley has got his own problems to deal with too: he’s just tortured a minor TV celebrity to death and blown an apparently anonymous commuter to pieces.

When Isabel, a British university student, travels to a remote Spanish town, it isn't only to enjoy the atmosphere. It's also to trace how and why her family name might have derived from the town, a quest her father, Sebastian made nine years ago, not long before his death in a car accident. But as Isabel, aided by local guide Mauricio, starts digging into her family's possible links with Alarcon, she's unprepared for the dark secrets uncovered; secrets that the current ruling nobility of Alarcon are keen to keep buried.

When the badly decayed body of an elderly woman is unearthed, Detective Chief Inspector Mark Lapslie and his sergeant, Emma Bradbury, are called in on the case. The body provides only two mysterious clues to the identity of the murderer: someone with a deadly knowledge of household plants used shears to clip the fingertips off the corpse's right hand. But this dearth of evidence is not Lapslie's only problem.

From the creator of BBC drama Silent Witness comes a gripping and sinister thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat. During the murder investigation of a teenage boy, DCI Mark Lapslie's methods come under fire and, as a result, his prime suspect walks free. Meanwhile another body is discovered, and Lapslie and his team quickly find themselves on the trail of a voracious serial killer. One year earlier, dedicated young Journalist Josie Dallyn stumbles over a chain of very similar cases.

Stretching along the shelf, standing upright, were 12 wooden coffins. Nine were closed and three open...with little dolls standing inside them. It was supposed to be the most special day of her life - until the unthinkable happened. Leslie Petersen is shot dead on her wedding day. With the bride's killer vanished without a trace, the investigation into the murder grinds to a halt before it's even begun. But then, the decomposing body of an unidentified homeless man is found in an old Cold War bunker, and DCI Mark Lapslie makes a bizarre discovery.