Forensic Labs and Reality

by Lisa Black
Author of Blunt Impact
 
From TV you get the impression that forensic labs are vast, gleaming expanses of glass walls and expensive equipment, with mood lighting and every possible resource. I have worked in forensic labs for 17 years and the truth is not quite that glamorous. 

Forensic labs have come a long way and they’re improving constantly, yes. I’ve had two jobs in this field so far and at both places we moved to a new facility, got lots of new equipment and added personnel…but we still don’t resemble anything on CSI.

Sometimes aspects of that extremely high-tech TV lab aren’t real. In no department or agency anywhere in the United States can your average tech take a fingerprint and search it against every single person who has ever been fingerprinted in the world, including job applicants and military. Despite the fact that you’ve seen it on TV every day for the past 50 years, it isn’t true. It may be true sooner than I think, but it is not true now. 

Most databases are local. My database consists of people arrested in the city of Cape Coral, Florida, and recent arrestees in the surrounding county. I can search the databases of selected other cities (about 10) by going through some extra steps. I am embarking on a procedure to search the FBI database (insert sound of angels singing here) but I have no idea yet exactly how that will work. I have no access to job applicants or current personnel, even our own, and certainly not military. This is not backward. The technology has made amazing leaps in just the past decade or two, but it’s still not TV.

We also do not have databases with the chemical formula of every material known to man, such as perfume, wall paint or toothpaste. Companies make their living producing these items, so they’re not going to publish their formulas to any Tom, Dick or Harry who happens to ask. We do have mass spectrometers or FTIRs to analyze the chemistry of such items, but even the most underutilized lab tech is not going to have the time or resources to gather a sample of every kind of paint used in the world, and even if she did, as soon as she finished it would be time for next season’s colors to hit the market. 

Sometimes labs may not have a function or two (handwriting analysis, ballistics) because they’re not reasonable. How often do we really need to analyze wall paint? Most labs grew out of a local or state police department, and began with fingerprint and drug analyses (theft/burglary and drug offenses being the most common crimes committed). Other capabilities are added on from there. But if your town doesn’t get a lot of shootings, it doesn’t need a whole ballistics department when it can send any casings off to the state lab and get the analysis done for free. Perhaps not promptly, but the arrest will likely be made on witness testimony so the analysis can be done at leisure while the suspect cools his jets in a jail cell. 

How often would we really analyze the molecules of perfume in the atmosphere (as if they’d still be there five hours after the crime was committed)? Seriously, it might make a great ‘aha’ moment on a TV show, but try introducing that into a court of law. Me: “There was a hint of Chanel No. 5 in the air! The same perfume as the defendant is wearing right now!” Defense attorney: “So? They sell a bottle of that every thirty seconds.” Me: “Um, nothing. I just thought it was interesting.”

As for ‘hacking into’ the company’s database to find how many bottles they sold and then the store’s database to find out who they sold them to…well, I’m not a lawyer but I think Sears, for example, would be terrifically ticked off about that. Not to mention the ACLU. 

The capabilities of any lab will be a function of space, money and interest.

Space, for obvious reasons.

Money, for equally obvious reasons since new technology requires an investment for equipment, personnel and training. Sometimes this works out better than other times. It’s not always easy to estimate how much use you’ll get out of something when you’ve never had one before. We have a fancy ‘crimescope’ that can supposedly see undeveloped latent prints…I’ve never had much luck with it. But we also get daily use out of the large superglue fuming chamber. 

We purchased a very expensive photography setup with a great camera, filters and alternate light source for photographing fingerprints on a variety of backgrounds (shiny, printed, rounded, plastic) and developed with various methods (superglue, powder, fluorescent dyes), and even though my knowledge of working with filters and lights is more a process of trial and error than anything else, I’ve gotten a lot of use out of it to obtain prints I wouldn’t have otherwise.

And when I say ‘expensive’, I am not exaggerating. The FTIR I mentioned earlier cost $35,000, as I recall, and that was 15 years ago. I loved to analyze paint, synthetic fibers and adhesives on it, but, almost always, those items are still circumstantial evidence. I can prove the killer used the same brand of duct tape as was found in the suspect’s garage. But unless I can make a jigsaw match to that roll, the defense will just point out that the manufacturer made a lot of duct tape. I can say the fiber on the victim’s shirt is the same as the fibers in the suspect’s sweater, but how many of those sweaters did Timberland distribute?  In my current city where we do not have a lot of violent crime, I couldn’t reasonably ask the city for funds to buy one. Car paint can be much more definite, provided you’re lucky enough to have some chip off during the hit and run.
 
As the hair and fiber expert, a fading and almost completely lost field, I recently got a comparison microscope. (My boss had the idea of farming me out to other agencies since no one in the state does hair and fiber comparisons anymore…hasn’t really worked out but if you need a fiber compared, give me a call!) The problem was, there was only $12,000 in the budget and a decent comparison microscope starts at 40 grand. So, I’ve got a not-so-decent one.

DNA analysis is expensive, but we can get our samples tested for free by the state lab. However, the state lab limits us to five samples at a time, and those will probably take from one to three months, if not longer. We can get the city to pony up for a private lab which will get the results back to us much quicker but will charge from $600 to $1,000 per sample, depending on how fast you want it. And each case will have a minimum of three samples—victim, suspect and evidence. There’s no cheap way to get fast DNA.

Interest also comes into play. We continued doing gunshot residue tests after many agencies had dropped them, simply because our chief at the time believed in them. We have a fancy system capable of copying a computer (meant to be used for child pornography or white collar cases); however learning to use it requires a few long, pricey classes in other states, and after the guy trained on this quit to open a bar (long story), the powers that be are reluctant, understandably, to invest in anyone else. I do not argue with this, I just keep my head well down when the topic arises—you say ‘binary code,’ and my eyes glaze over.

In conclusion, you can’t assume what capabilities your local crime lab may possess or not possess until you ask them. And, though they certainly could be in play, you can’t assume that a lack in any area is the result of disregard, cronyism, backward thinking or bad money management. Most crime labs, like every other facility, try to do the best they can with what they’ve got. 
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Lisa Black spent the five happiest years of her life in a morgue. As a forensic scientist in the Cleveland coroner’s office she analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, blood and many other forms of trace evidence, as well as crime scenes. Now she’s a certified latent print examiner and CSI for the Cape Coral Police Department. Her books have been translated into six languages. Evidence of Murder reached the NYT mass market bestsellers list. Visit her website at: www.lisa-black.com

Blunt Impact, available April 1, features forensic scientist Theresa MacLean and a series of murders surrounding a skyscraper under construction in downtown Cleveland. The first to die is young, sexy concrete worker Samantha, thrown from the 23rd floor. The only witness is her 11-year-old daughter Anna, nicknamed Ghost. Ghost will stop at nothing to find her mother’s killer, and Theresa will stop at nothing to keep Ghost safe. Kindle owners can find a bargain in Lisa's new book The Prague Project, written under the name Beth Cheylan. A death in West Virginia sends FBI agent Ellie Gardner and NYPD Counterterrorism lieutenant Michael Stewart on a chase across Europe as they track stolen nukes and lost Nazi gold, hoping to avert the deaths of millions of people.

THINGS THAT GO BOOM

by Sheila Connolly

May is the month when somebody dies.

I'm talking about television series, particularly the long-running ensemble shows with large casts, so you can imagine eliminating one cast member without the whole structure falling apart.  Think the CSI family, NCIS, The Mentalist, Criminal Minds, and so on, where death and destruction lurk around every corner. In May, the usual end of most series' season, something has to go seriously wrong in the last episode, leaving somebody's life hanging in the balance.

I understand the value of a cliffhanger, really, I do.  We as writers want to leave our readers (or in the case of broadcast/cable/whatever people use these days, the viewers) with a burning question that absolutely must be resolved in the next book or coming episode.  We want them to groan at the end of the season and make a mental bookmark to tune in as soon as the series returns, usually in the fall, to find out who survived and who didn't.  In case that bookmark isn't enough, networks will start bombarding us with teasers months in advance. 

We've been watching some of these casts for years now, and we've come to care for the characters, some more, some less.  That's what keeps a series coming back year after year, and keeps people watching it in endless reruns on cable stations.  Viewers like the people in the show.  That's a good thing.

But don't you feel just a bit manipulated when the scriptwriters sit down to create that season-ender and pull out the hackneyed devastating crisis, leaving you wondering just who is going to walk out of the smoke and debris in September? Admit it:  you find yourself making mental bets, and running down the list, thinking, "isn't he making a movie this year? Bet he wanted time off," or "they've pretty much gone through every possible plot twist for her (i.e., she's been romantically involved with every male castmate)—maybe she'd better get bumped upstairs about now" (or die now—anything that removes her from sight, permanently).

Seeing this plot device once in a while is fine.  It's a powerful ending; otherwise it wouldn't be used so often.  However, when every series of the crime-solving ilk uses it at the same time, it becomes almost comic.  You can surf from network to network and see the same promo for The Last Episode of the Year:  The Explosion. Doesn't matter which show or which cast, but you know the building will blow up. Or some thug will spray the bar where the cast is celebrating their latest victory with automatic gunfire.  Or a terrorist will spread a lethal plague in the subway system. Or (fill in your own choice of cliffhanger).  And some cast member will walk into the sunset.

And then in the fall someone new will walk in—the silver-haired team leader, the sexy blonde, the brash youngster, the geeky techie—and soon we won't even remember who it was that was vaporized the year before. Series life will go on.

We've got another week or two of explosions to get through.  And then blessed silence—until September.

D.P.Lyle: The CSI Effect

We are pleased to have D. P. Lyle, MD as our guest today. He's the friend of mystery writers everywhere because he helps us murder our fictional victims with poisons, bludgeon them with blunt instruments, stab them, shoot them, or just find them in their different states of decomposition. He'll tell us what the body looks like when frozen in a lake, burnt in a building, or buried in a shallow grave.

He's also the Macavity Award winning and Edgar Award nominated author of the non-fiction books, MURDER & MAYHEM, FORENSICS FOR DUMMIES, FORENSICS & FICTION, FORENSICS & FICTION 2, and HOWDUNNIT: FORENSICS as well as the Samantha Cody thrillers DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND and DOUBLE BLIND, the Dub Walker Thrillers STRESS FRACTURE and HOT LIGHTS, COLD STEEL, and the media tie-in novels ROYAL PAINS: FIRST, DO NO HARM and ROYAL PAINS: SICK RICH based on the hit TV series. His essay on Jules Verne’s THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND appears in THRILLERS: 100 MUST READS.

He has worked with many novelists and with the writers of popular television shows such as Law & Order, CSI: Miami, Diagnosis Murder, Monk, Judging Amy, Peacemakers, Cold Case, House, Medium, Women’s Murder Club, 1-800-Missing, The Glades, and Pretty Little Liars. And here he is to tell us about the CSI Effect.

You’ve no doubt heard of the CSI Effect but what exactly is it? Does it actually exist? Both the definition and whether it is real or not are controversial with experts weighing in on both sides of the issue.

It derives from the many forensic science shows, both fictional and documentary-style, that populate/dominate the TV schedule. Many point to the CBS series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as the beginning of the effect, which then expanded with the appearance of the “CSI clones” and shows such as Bones, NCIS, Cold Case, and Forensic Files. It’s impossible to flip on the TV without seeing some crime show and forensic science is invariably part of the story. The same goes for most mysteries and thrillers you read and virtually every real-life case you see presented on national or local news.

The CSI Effect could be defined as the impact of these shows, which reveal cool and clever forensic science techniques, on the public, criminals, law enforcement officials, juries, and courts. They have created a level of expectation that simply isn’t realistic. They portray crime labs as being fully equipped with very expensive instruments and staffed with brilliant minds that magically uncover the most esoteric evidence. They make the very rare seem almost commonplace. They suggest that all these wonderful tools are widely available and frequently employed in criminal cases. The truth is vastly different. DNA is involved in perhaps 1% of cases and it isn’t available in 20 minutes. Crime labs are severely underfunded and most have meager equipment, not the plasma screens and holographic generators seen on TV. The lab techs are indeed smart and dedicated individuals but they aren’t prescient. They can’t magically solve complex crimes by simply “seeing” the solution in a microscope or within their minds. It doesn’t work that way. At least not often.

So how does all this information---or is it misinformation?--effect the public, criminals, and the police and courts? Simply put, they teach criminals how to avoid leaving behind evidence and unrealistically raise public expectations.

Criminals watch these TV shows and then alter their behavior to avoid detection. They learn not to leave behind fingerprints and DNA, to hide from surveillance cameras, to avoid using cellphones and computers in the planning and execution of their crimes, and a host of other things. Fortunately, these shows are not always accurate and don’t cover all contingencies involved in a given criminal activity, proving the old adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The criminal thinks he has thought of everything but while he focuses on one bit of evidence he ignores others. An example would be the thief who planned a breaking and entering home robbery. He knew that shoe prints could be left in the soft dirt of the planter beneath his entry point window so he took off his shoes. He then realized he had not brought gloves, so to prevent leaving fingerprints, he removed his socks and used them as hand covers. The crime was interrupted by the home owner, an altercation with blood shed followed, and the thief left a bloody footprint on a piece of broken window glass. This proved to be his undoing.

The public, and thus jury members, comes away from these shows believing that high-tech investigations are involved in every case and if the police or prosecutors fail to make DNA or blood analysis part of the case they must have done something wrong. Defense attorneys often latch on to this and use it to undermine the police investigation. During the famous Scott Peterson case, how many times did you hear news reports and pundits talk about the lack of DNA evidence as if this made the case weak? In truth, finding Laci’s blood or DNA on Scott or his clothing would be of little help. They were married, they lived together, there were a hundred innocent reasons for Laci’s DNA to be found. Scott’s conviction stemmed from his stupidity, and the fact that he was guilty, not from high-tech forensic techniques, underlining the fact that most cases are solved by good police work and not by cool science.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, juries wanted confessions and eyewitnesses, both of which we now know can be false and erroneous. Now, after the saturation of our psyche with forensic sciences, they expect DNA and other sophisticated evidence. This not only makes gaining a conviction more difficult but also gives prosecutors pause before filing charges in cases without such evidence.

So, it can be said that the CSI Effect alters the criminal justice system in many ways. It helps criminals avoid detection, creates unrealistic expectations in the public and in juries, and makes prosecution of some crimes problematic. But there are positive aspects in that this increased interest in forensic science has led to more people choosing this as a career and indeed the number of colleges offering forensic science curricula and degrees has mushroomed.

Thank you, Doug. See more about him at his website http://www.dplylemd.com/ and his blog: http://writersforensicsblog.wordpress.com/

CSI Don't See It

by Sheila Connolly

I watch CSI—the original consistently, and the off-shoots occasionally. I know they represent a non-professional’s fantasy of what forensic science is all about, and in the real world DNA analysis takes six months, not six minutes. But as long as I treat the episodes as fiction I’m fine.

But there was one thing about a recent episode that bothered me as a writer. In this episode, the victim was found draped over a barbed wire fence (I might question whether that particular fence was strong enough to support the dead weight of a body, but I could overlook that), and his head had been hacked off and was jammed on a nearby pole. All appropriately gory, blood duly spattered and dripping. Ray Langston (the character played by Laurence Fishburne) waxed a wee bit over-poetic when he said he could see the horror in the dead man’s eyes, which of course were open and staring.

And then Langston examined the head more closely, and lo and behold, a large insect climbed out of the victim’s mouth—an insect that I immediately identified as a long-horn beetle.

Let me say that my husband is a professional entomologist (although his job isn’t anywhere near as interesting as Gil Grissom’s was), so I’m attuned to insects. I suppose the average viewer wouldn’t know how many things are wrong with this scenario. Fact one: there was no earthly reason for that beetle to be inside anyone’s mouth, dead or alive (the victim or the beetle—take your pick). These are vegetarian beetles, if you will—they eat trees. No interest in flesh. Fact two: the victim had been dead only a few hours, and was killed late at night. This kind of beetle is active during the day. That beetle should not have been where it was—unless the writers were going for the “ick” factor. Lots of people go “eeew” when they see any bug, much less one crawling out of a corpse’s mouth.

I will concede that it was a very photogenic beetle—that variety is big (close to two inches) and has attractive variegated antennae that are longer than the insect’s body. They also move slowly, so they’re easy to film. They aren’t particularly dangerous to humans (they have pincers, but they can’t even pierce human skin), so Nick Stokes could pick it up easily (but why didn’t he bag it as evidence?).

It appears that the sole function of this vagrant beetle was to give Ray a chance to say “where’s the Bug Man when you need him?”—an oblique reference to the absent Grissom. Insider joke. Cute.

But that was the problem. This beetle was introduced up front, with plenty of face time. He was even given a name: Longhorn Beetle. And then he was never seen again.

It’s the Chekhov’s gun problem. Chekhov wrote "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it." Mr. Beetle is the loaded rifle in this case: since we met him in Act One, we expect him to show up again later, complete with an explanation (he bit the killer and provided DNA evidence? He is found only in the remote reaches of Borneo, and only one suspect had been to Borneo recently?). Around the penultimate commercial break, I turned to my daughter and said, “They haven’t explained the beetle yet.” I was waiting—and it never happened.

For shame, CSI: you have violated a fundamental principle of good writing. Explain your beetles!

Reality: What a Concept!

Sandra Parshall

In a column in the July 13 issue of Publishers Weekly, children’s book author Peter Mandel deplores the current emphasis on getting the facts correct in fiction. He doesn’t understand why anyone cares whether the hair styles, clothing, and settings in the John Adams miniseries or in Mad Men accurately reflect the eras in which the dramas are set. He has personally received complaints that his new children’s picture book “wasn’t fully researched” and that one character was unfairly portrayed.

Oh, Mr. Mandel, you should come on over to the world of crime fiction if you want to witness a true mania for getting the details right. An entire branch of reference book publishing is devoted to guides for writers of mysteries, suspense, and thrillers. Behind me as I type this are bookshelves loaded down with such titles as The Crime Writer’s Reference Guide, How to Try a Murder, Cause of Death, Bones, The Crime Writer’s Reference Guide, Hidden Evidence, Corpse, Crime Scene, Death Investigator’s Handbook, Howdunit, Deadly Doses, Crime Classification Manual, The Criminal Law Handbook... Well, you get the point. I have at least 100 books covering various aspects of crime, police work, criminal thinking and behavior, and the workings of the US legal system, and I still have to go online sometimes to find answers to vexing questions.

Online sources of information are even more numerous than the books on my shelves. The Crime Scene Writers list on Yahoo and Dr. Doug Lyle’s blog and website are among the most popular internet sources for those of us who dream up ways to commit murder and get away with it for 300 pages or so. The national Sisters in Crime listserv has a feature called Mentor Monday that allows members all-day access to experts in various fields.

Why do we bother, if as Mr. Mandel contends in PW, the purpose of fiction is to divert and entertain us, to take us to an alternate reality, not to painstakingly recreate reality itself? Why are so many readers unable to enjoy a mystery if it gets a single fact wrong, and why do writers themselves jeer at CSI and Without a Trace for being more fantasy than reality? (Five-minute DNA tests? Don’t we wish! Thirty-second fingerprint matching done entirely by computer? Ha! We all know it takes hours, days, even a week, and a human, not a machine, must make the final match. The FBI rushing to launch a search when some guy doesn’t come home for dinner? Give me a break!)

The blame for our make-it-real mania may rest with the medium through which you are reading these words. Anybody with a computer and an internet connection can find out almost anything these days, verify any statement or prove it false. Readers who spotted bloopers have never hesitated to point them out to the authors, but those knowledgeable readers were once far fewer – and they sent their complaints on paper through the mail.

I don’t think our educational system is such a grand success these days that every student emerges with encyclopedic knowledge of the world – quite the contrary, unfortunately. And I don’t think television has enlightened anyone. After all, TV is what gives us those ridiculous scenarios on CSI and Without a Trace. Newspapers are teetering on the brink of extinction. So where are ordinary people picking up knowledge about crime and crime-solving? The same place I go for it, apparently – the internet. And once in possession of proof that an author has erred, the reader (chortling with vengeful delight, I’m sure) immediately taps out a withering digital letter to the writer and hits Send.

But am I complaining? No. I am one of those readers who demand accuracy. I don’t point out mistakes to authors because I’m a crime fiction writer too and the last thing I want to do is embarrass another of my species. I take notice, though, and I remember. And I remind myself yet again to check my facts when I’m writing.

To get back to Mr. Mandel’s “So what?” question about the effect of inaccuracies in fiction, I can only answer for myself, but I suspect my attitude is shared by many. I don’t choose accuracy over good writing and entertainment. I want accuracy and good writing and an entertaining story. I can find CSI entertaining as is, but I believe it would be more enjoyable if I weren’t rolling my eyes in disbelief every few minutes. I won’t throw a mystery novel against a wall if the author gets a fact wrong, and I can suspend disbelief and enjoy an amateur sleuth story, but the more realistic the novel is, the more I enjoy it. This is probably why I prefer the darker stuff. Murder is evil. Don’t try to make me believe it isn’t.

I’m also put off by inaccuracy in science fiction. I love Star Trek, and because it’s set in the future, I can accept whatever is presented. Who am I to say whether this or that amazing feat will or won’t be possible in a couple hundred years? Did Ben Franklin ever imagine such a thing as a computer, let alone the internet? The distant future no doubt holds technological wonders we can’t even dream of now. But SF stories set in the near future, in a universe that looks pretty much like the current one, have to be plausible or I’ll lose interest. (Egregious example: the new movie Moon. Don’t get me started.)

Returning to crime fiction, the genre in which I read most often, accurate facts don’t intrude on my reading experience or distract me from the story. They provide a solid foundation for the story, they make me trust the author. So my message to other writers is simply this: Get the facts straight while telling me a good story and I will happily follow you deep into your book’s fictional world.

How do you feel about factual errors in novels? Do you think the demand for accuracy is a good thing or a bad thing?

Cops with Cleavage

Sandra Parshall

What is your mental image of a female cop or crime scene investigator? If it includes five-inch heels, hair flowing halfway to the waist, and skin-tight tops that expose a generous amount of cleavage, you’ve been watching too much TV.

The people who produce shows about law enforcement are willing to give women equality in the workplace, but only if they go to work looking like prostitutes trolling the streets for johns. Every time I watch CSI or Without a Trace, I am amused by the absurdities of the action – crime scene techs questioning suspects and ordering cops to make arrests, the FBI launching a widespread search because some guy didn’t come home for dinner, instant DNA analysis – but I accept them if the story is entertaining. What I can’t accept is the way the women dress.

I first noticed it on NYPD Blue, a show I loved. I kept wondering how any female detective could deal successfully with street punks or hardened criminals when she was leaning over them with half of her breasts exposed. And if she ever had to chase a suspect, wouldn’t high heels slow her down a little?

The CSI shows are often shot in near-total darkness, but the women’s cleavage is always visible. I don’t suppose a crime scene investigator’s manner of dress matters much, since a CSI’s work is done mostly behind the scenes and in labs. Even so, it’s hard to suspend disbelief and accept someone as a professional when she is so obviously an actress decked out in sexy clothes by the wardrobe department.

The women who really show us all they’ve got are Poppy Montgomery and Roselyn Sanchez, playing FBI agents on Without a Trace. Both expose ample cleavage in every show, and they almost always wear their very long hair hanging loose over their shoulders and down their backs. When the two of them work together, and they whip out their badges and announce ominously, “We’re from the FBI,” I always expect the person they’ve confronted to burst out laughing.

Since the majority of viewers for these shows are women, I don’t know who this in-your-face sexuality is aimed at. Maybe the producers are trying to attract more male viewers? An interviewer once asked an actress on one program why all the women wear such revealing clothes, and she replied, “You don’t think we dress ourselves, do you? We wear what we’re told to wear.” Somebody higher up, probably a male somebody, is making the decision to portray professional women as Playboy bunny wannabes.

I know how real-life crime scene investigators and cops feel about the CSI shows, and I know Without a Trace is based on a false premise – the FBI doesn’t have any units, in New York or elsewhere, dedicated solely to finding missing persons – but I haven’t heard female cops or CSIs or FBI agents speak out about the way women are portrayed on these programs. Are they insulted by it? Do they laugh it off? Do they worry that the public’s image of them is being influenced by TV fantasy, and they aren’t being taken seriously as well-trained, competent professionals?

How do you, as a viewer, feel about the way women are presented on TV crime shows? Has your image of female cops and CSIs been affected by television? Can you think of any explanation for why women are still being objectified this way by the entertainment industry, at this late date in our history?


When I call up my own mental picture of a dedicated, thoroughly professional woman in law enforcement, what I get is Cathy L. Lanier, chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, DC. I’m stubbornly hanging onto this image, regardless of what I see on TV.







(Photo of Chief Lanier from the DCMPD.)

Killers Who Refuse to Die

Sandra Parshall

Oh, how I hated to see Nicole Wallace go. She was such a bitch, and evil right down to her toes. I loved her.

Nicole, played by the wonderful Olivia d’Abo, was the only villain who’d ever outwitted the brilliant Bobby Goren on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. And Bobby was the only man who ever wandered into this poisonous spider’s web and lived to tell about it. They were perfectly matched. She should have gone on forever, making well-timed return appearances in Goren’s world. But last Sunday night she died, in a peculiarly unsatisfying fashion – not in a confrontation with Goren, but offstage, at the hand of another twisted soul who thought he was doing Goren a favor. Since we didn’t actually see her die, and we all know that on TV shows DNA results aren’t necessarily final, I hold out hope that we haven’t lost one of the crime genre’s creepiest and most fascinating recurring villains.

The majority of crime novels and all of television’s crime dramas are built around recurring heroes or heroines, but the villain who refuses to die and keeps popping up again and again seems to have fallen out of favor with most writers. The few authors who attempt such characters don’t always handle them well.

The most famous recurring villain in mystery fiction is Professor Moriarty, who tested Sherlock Holmes’s skills many times, and disappeared over Reichenbach Falls while locked in combat with the great detective. That was supposed to be the end of both of them, but readers wouldn’t let Arthur Conan Doyle get away with it.

Hannibal Lecter was a charismatic recurring villain until his creator decided to explain what made him the way he was. In the novel Hannibal, we were asked to believe that seeing enemy soliders make a meal of his little sister awakened Hannibal’s own appetite for human flesh. In fiction as in real life, there is such a thing as Too Much Information. I have no interest in ever reading about Hannibal again.

Chelsea Cain has created a female version of Hannibal in Heartsick and her upcoming book, Sweetheart. Her beautiful serial killer, Gretchen Lowell, is in prison, and Detective Archie Sheridan is the one victim who escaped before she got around to cutting out his heart, but he can’t shake off the psychological hold she has on him any more than Clarice Starling can rid herself of Hannibal Lecter.

On TV, Gil Grissom of CSI spent a couple of seasons pursuing a killer who created miniature replicas of her crime scenes before she actually committed the murders. An intriguing premise, but the killer, when she was tracked down, was sadly disappointing and unworthy of the long buildup.

The Joker in the Batman stories finally got an actor capable of playing him in all his twisted glory when Heath Ledger took on the part for The Dark Knight. Ledger’s performance is the only thing worth watching in that film. He made The Joker sick and menacing and genuinely scary, and his future portrayals of the character are among the many brilliant performances we will never see from this talented man who died too young.

One of my favorite recurring killers in crime fiction was the female contract assassin pursued by Lucas Davenport in a couple of John Sandford’s Prey novels. She wasn’t Lucas’s equal – who is, after all? – but she came close, and I was sorry to see her die.

Patricia Cornwell was quite a bit less successful in creating her own recurring villain. The French “werewolf” who bedeviled Kay Scarpetta (she insisted on calling him le loup garou) was alternately laughable and disgusting, but never believable. Without believability, a killer isn’t going to be frightening.

James Patterson did somewhat better with the determined killer who went after Alex Cross and his family more than once, but the overall quality of the stories wasn’t high enough to allow the character to shine.

There are a few more, but even the complete list of continuing villains in modern crime fiction is sadly skimpy. Why don’t more writers attempt to write recurring villains? Are they afraid to show their heroes and heroines as fallible beings who don’t always close the case? Or have they simply bowed to the marketing notion that every book must be self-contained?

What freaks out a CSI?

Elizabeth Becka (Guest blogger)


Our guest is the author of Trace Evidence and the just-released sequel, Unknown Means, both featuring crime scene investigator Evelyn James. When she isn’t writing thrillers, Elizabeth Becka is a real-life forensic specialist with the Cape Coral, Florida, Police Department. She previously worked as a crime scene investigator in Cleveland, the setting of her novels. Visit her web site at www.elizabethbecka.com.


Everybody’s afraid of something.

My heroine is a forensic scientist with the coroner’s office who investigates, of course, homicides. (Coroner = victims are dead.) But as part of her ‘other duties as assigned,’ she also investigates suicides, traffic deaths and industrial accidents. One such industrial accident has occurred in the salt mine which exists (I swear I am not making this up) 1800 feet below the surface of Cleveland, Ohio. Under Lake Erie, to be precise.

There’s just one problem. My heroine is claustrophobic.

So am I.

The only thing that ever scared me about working at the coroner’s office was the cooler—the large refrigerated room where the deceased, on gurneys, were stored. I hated the cooler. I couldn’t care less that it was full of dead bodies, that didn’t bother me a bit. What bothered me was that there were no windows. (I hated the cooler at my first job at an ice cream store too, and the most dangerous item there was a bag of Spanish peanuts…of course, the only dangerous thing in the coroner’s office cooler is possible exposure to TB.)

I rarely needed to go into the cooler, but occasionally it became necessary and I did it. I even shut the door behind me, because otherwise the refrigeration would flow into the hallway, wasting energy and taxpayer dollars.

There were only two things I ever refused to do at the coroner’s office: clean out the crypts, and ride the freight elevator without a light in it.

I didn’t like the freight elevator to begin with. It was one of those barbaric contraptions with the inner wall composed of grating that you had to pull shut after closing the outer door so that you could see the wall move when the elevator went up or down. At least you could have seen the wall move if you kept your eyes open, which I didn’t. It had one light bulb in the ceiling, which would occasionally burn out.

The deep freeze, a 20 x 10 room kept at minus 70 and used for storing old biological samples and bodies who weren’t going anywhere soon, had two light bulbs. The rear one had burnt out years before and had not been replaced, since the maintenance staff did not want to spend any more time in there than the rest of us, and the front one would burn out regularly too. I would go into the deep freeze armed with just a flashlight. But the perfectly empty freight elevator, no.

Please don’t point out that not having a light bulb scarcely made a difference if I kept my eyes closed anyway. It did, and you know it.

This isn’t quite as wimpy as it sounds, since most staff would consider saying no to my boss far more perilous than a silly dark freight elevator, but even she knew that you could only yank a dog’s chain so many times before it turns and bites, and did not push me.

The other thing I refused to do had nothing to do with claustrophobia. It was to clean out the old crypts (the small door and sliding tray system seen on TV, long since discontinued and used only for storage by the time I arrived there). That was out of the question because I had been traumatized about such crypts when I was a child, from the mere preview of a horror movie that made much use of surprises behind those doors. It appeared to be an utterly terrifying movie, at least to a small child, but in reality it must have been truly lousy since it doesn’t even show up in the Internet Movie Database. Doesn’t matter. The damage had been done. I would help clean out the crypts. Just not by myself.

The point is, a vital part of any suspense tale is facing something frightening, and much more so when it’s something the character finds personally frightening.

So readers are enjoying the subplot about the salt mine. It’s an interesting piece of industrial engineering, and it’s an odd role reversal: We’re used to seeing Evelyn walk up to a decomposed body without batting an eye while everyone around her is freaking out. Now Evelyn is, inwardly, freaking out, but to everyone else it’s just another day at work. 1800 feet down with a single elevator for egress? Sure, what’s odd about that? We’re actually under the lake? Yes, but there’s 1700 feet of stone between us and the water. There, that should make you feel better.

Sure.

Everyone’s afraid of something.