Did anyone else catch Forensics: The Real CSI (pic, above, credited BBC.com) on BBC2 last night about the ram raid on a jewellery store? I watched it because Birmingham *grins* but it was absolutely fascinating how the police pieced it all together – and how the criminals clearly thought they’d been clever enough to get away with it, and weren’t.
It showed how long-winded forensic examination, and police-work in general, can be – too often we only see the shortened version on films and TV shows, where fingerprint analysis appears in seconds and DNA results aren’t far behind.
And the criminals this particular episode featured reminded me of some of the characters in my own Birmingham-set noir books – street-savvy yet arrogant, and ultimately unsuccessful!
You can find all three of these books at my other website. I don’t include much about forensics because they’re written from the point of view of the criminals, but you can certainly see how the characters inevitably fall from grace.
FIONA GLASS 