THE DR. THORNDYKE TRILOGY (Forensic Science Mysteries)

Book excerpt: Dr. John Thorndyke is a fictional detective in a series of novels. He is a medical jurispractitioner - originally a medical doctor, he turned to the bar and became one of the first, in modern parlance, forensic scientists. His solutions were based on his method of collecting all possible data (including dust and pond weed) and making inferences from them before looking at any of the protagonists and motives in the crimes. It is this method which gave rise to one of Freeman's most ingenious inventions, the inverted detective story, where the criminal act is described first and the interest lies in Thorndyke's subsequent unraveling of it. Table of Contents: The Red Thumb Mark The Eye of Osiris (The Vanishing Man) The Mystery of 31 New Inn Richard Austin Freeman (1862-1943) was a British writer of detective stories, mostly featuring the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr. Thorndyke. Freeman used some of his early experiences as a colonial surgeon in his novels. Many of the Dr. Thorndyke stories involve genuine, but often quite arcane, points of scientific knowledge, from areas such as tropical medicine, metallurgy and toxicology.