Maggots, Murder, and Men: Memories and Reflections of a Forensic Entomologist (Hardcover)

by Zakaria Erzinclioglu (Author) "Viewed dispassionately, a dead human body is a magnificent and highly nutritious resource..." (more)
Key Phrases: very simple clue, winter gnats, entomological evidence, Sherlock Holmes, Karen Price, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Death is rarely pretty. It is decidedly unappealing when a body, made available to nature, is colonized and consumed by insects, worms, and other animals--unless, like Zakaria Erzinçlioglu, you have an appreciation for this "magnificent and highly nutritious resource."

Erzinçlioglu, a forensic scientist with three decades' experience in solving all manner of grisly crimes, gives a lighthanded if sometimes creepy account of what happens to the human body in death, and of how scientists can deduce from the succession of insect life, among other signs, just what happened to bring about that demise. As he ranges across the annals of wrongdoing, crime buffs will learn much from his observations on, among other matters, the outright stupidity of many murderers, who "seem to think that the last place a criminal investigator is likely to look is under the floorboards," and the many odd twists and turns that a scientific investigation can take while ferreting out the truth.

Erzinçlioglu's book makes a sharp-witted companion to such recent works as Jessica Snyder Sachs's Corpse and Richard Conniff's Spineless Wonders, adding to a growing--and oddly fascinating--library devoted to the coroner's art. --Gregory McNamee

Review

"Sure to attract readers from among "CSI" devotees, this book is a page-turner--but not for the squeamish. The logic in the book could shame Sherlock Holmes. A total find." -- Santa Cruz Sentinel

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur (January 10, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312287747
• ISBN-13: 978-0312287740
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #589,280 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Forensic Scientist's Professional Life, March 6, 2002

By A Customer

This is an account of the author's personal experiences, philosophy, views and concerns about the field of forensic science. Being an entomologist, the author preferentially discusses the use of insect activity and development on a corpse in estimating, among other things, the time of death. Relevant cases are discussed. But there's more. The author also discusses a variety of other aspects of importance in the world of forensic science that may be overlooked in other books on the subject. For example, less than honest stategies used by some barristers and sollicitors, some police officers and some forensic scientits in order to ensure that a certain case is resolved in a manner that they feel it should be resolved, rather than by basing it on hard evidence (the specific problems discussed in this regard are those in Britain). A great variety of personal anecdotes - some gruesome, some funny - complete this delightful book. It will not disappoint forensic science buffs.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tell-tale bugs, February 24, 2002

By	Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

With its arresting title and anecdotal style, this British entomologist's memoir of his forensic career will appeal to crime buffs and bug enthusiasts alike. A big Sherlock Holmes fan, Erzinclioglu shows how the life span and habits of blowflies, cheese skippers, scuttle flies and numerous other opportunistic insects help reconstruct events surrounding a suspicious death.

Like Holmes, the entomologist can examine a scene of chaos and decomposition and baffle the onlooker with his pronouncements. For the untrained witness, even the expert police detective, will not have noted the presence of one type of maggot and the absence of another, or the evidence of several generations activity or the accumulation of tiny pupae cases among the debris. "When one looks at a complex scene, with vast numbers of small objects in it, the human mind will notice only those things with which it is familiar. The rest will make no sense and will be ignored."

Of course Erzinclioglu is not in the habit of making dramatic statements at the scene. He describes the painstaking gathering and labeling of specimens, the further examination of the body on the pathologist's table and the subsequent sorting and analysis of samples, which leads, most often, to a reasonably precise determination of time of death. As the pathologist cannot pinpoint time of death after about three days, this determination is the most important aspect of the entomologist's job.

Obviously this is not always easy - animal predation, weather, locality and other factors may complicate the scientist's work, and Erzinclioglu describes a few mistakes - his own as well as others, as he takes the reader through 25 years of criminal investigation. Mostly, however, his results concur with other evidence or provide essential leads, though not all cases are solved.

His anecdotal style takes us through case after case - the discovery of decomposed or even skeletal remains and the subsequent investigation of insect activity. Sometimes the body has been moved after death; occasionally insect evidence on a suspect may link him to the crime. Most often murder is not the intriguing mystery of fiction but the sordid story of the handyman bashing the old lady for her money, the husband disposing of the wife, the violent thief. But a few deaths are particularly haunting - the young suicide found four years afterwards in a filthy, rat-infested house used as storage for cloth bags, the air and floor filled with moths. The horrible image of the old man shown to have died of natural causes a week after the house he was lying in was boarded up.

Not every case concerns murder (or even death) and not every case belongs to Erzinclioglu. He describes the discovery of a skull in Tennessee in which a nest of paper wasps determined time of death. In New Zealand investigators pinpointed the origin of marijuana shipments from the types of insect remains found in the cannabis. He devotes a chapter to revisiting historical events in the light of insect evidence.

Erzinclioglu also muses on sociological lessons and observations from his long career - a chapter on mental pathologies involving insects, another on "broken lives," another on the "ends and means" of investigation, exploring the sometimes overzealous tactics of police and prosecution. He observes the stupidity of many criminals who seem to believe that the last place investigators will look is under their floorboards and opines that our times are more callously violent than even the days of public hangings and witch burnings.

Opinionated and enthusiastic, Erzinclioglu is informative and engaging, interspersing the grisly with the humorous, though there is more of the former than the latter. The sheer range of cases and types of insect evidence will fascinate anyone interested in crime and detection.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Collection of Anecdotes and Opinions, June 25, 2002

By	Daniel Graf "Daniel Graf" (Tuscaloosa, Alabama) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The secondary title of Maggots, Murder, and Men by Zakaria Erzinçlioglu is accurate-- Memories and Reflections of a Forensic Entomologist. Dr. Zak, as he is known to those unwilling to pronounce his name, has compiled an anthology of anecdotes and opinions accumulated over his long career of examining bugs for the British criminal justice system. I chose to read this book because I wanted to learn more than I already knew about forensic entomology, but I did not want to shell out the bucks to purchase an appropriate textbook. Maggots, Murder, and Men is a fine introduction to the basics; Dr. Erzinçlioglu explains quite nicely the logic of using flies, fly larvae and other creepy-crawlies to determine the time of death of a body. He provides a bit of the fly life cycle and discusses the ecology of various species, but the entomology ends there. There are no identification keys or the like.

The book is well written and entertaining. Besides bug stories, there is also a fair bit of exposition on such subjects as the criminal justice system, hypothesis testing, shady people (from both sides of the law), and Sherlock Holmes. I am quite sure that while one is picking through many tedious piles of insect samples a jillion odd thoughts pop to mind. I am thankful that Zakaria Erzinçlioglu chose to commit some of his to posterity.