The real reason why it’s almost impossible to get away with murder from one of the worlds

When Marie Latelle was strangled to death in 1912 in the French city of Lyon, suspicion fell on her boyfriend Emile Gourbin.

But he had an alibi – friends said he had been playing cards at the time of the murder.

However, when Edmond Locard, widely regarded as the father of forensic science, analysed scrapings from underneath Gourbin’s fingernails, he found bismuth, magnesium stearate, zinc oxide and iron oxide – substances used in cosmetics.

Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the early 20th century’s most famous expert pathologist

The local chemist who supplied Latelle’s custom-made make-up confirmed that the components matched, and Gourbin confessed. He had put the clock forward in the room where the card game had taken place, then given his friends plenty to drink so their mistimed memories would aid his deception.

This is one study in Professor Dame Sue Black’s superb book about forensic science and the expert witnesses who explain it to jurors.

Her own career as an anatomist has taken her from war crimes investigations in Kosovo to identifying bodies after the 2004 Asian tsunami.

But despite her eminence she always took care to remain grounded in court. Literally – she slipped off her shoes before giving evidence and pointed her feet towards the jury, to make sure she directed her answers to them rather than the lawyers or judge.

Her modesty is in contrast to the arrogance of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the early 20th century’s most famous expert pathologist. It’s now thought that his excessive self-belief might have contributed to several miscarriages of justice. He once declared: ‘I have never claimed to be God, merely his locum on his weekends off.’

Most of Black’s stories will be new to the reader, such as the robber who wore two pairs of trousers in a failed attempt to conceal his bow legs, though others are well-known, like Colin Pitchfork, the Leicestershire rapist and murderer convicted through DNA profiling.

He had initially escaped the police’s net by paying someone else to give a blood sample on his behalf, and was only caught because the other man mentioned the deception to a work colleague over a pint.

The book is full of fascinating insights, such as the fact that arsenic was so common as a poison in the 19th century that it became known as ‘the inheritance powder’.

We learn that blondes have 150,000 hairs on their head (compared to just 90,000 for redheads), that male hands have an average of 3.38 scars on them (female hands have 2.39), and that ‘blood is often not spread until the second blow’.

Black is a very likeable narrator. She knows that complete certainty is almost always a myth, and so she’s vigilant about overstating her case.

She learned a lesson about using a few words too many when stating the implements used to dismember a body could have been found in most kitchens, ‘including my own’. The defence barrister replied: ‘Remind me not to take up an invitation to yours for dinner.’