Jo Ward has an incredibly difficult but absolutely fascinating job working in police forensics as a crime scenes coordinator. Her book details her career and life and how she came to work and rise in police forensics. She details her day to day work, the importance of her job and many of the most memorable cases she has worked on.
Jo has feature in a BBC documentary, Forensics, which I have not seen, but I am sure she is shown to be the caring professional that she is. Every victim that she encounters, she treats with respect, talking to them and apologising to them as she passes them on to the next person dealing with them. I would hope that every forensic person would be so compassionate as Jo.
The book does not soften the role, talking of how difficult it is, the stress it causes, the impact it has on family life and the terrible sights that are seen (spoken of in some detail). All of this is made so much more difficult by the continual budget cuts to the police service which has an impact on areas of the work of the police. It is absolutely shocking, and must be heartbreaking for professionals like Jo to see what is happening.
One matter I thought that it is very unnecessary to mention, was when discussing the gallows humour that is employed at work, Jo gives a specific example of when it was employed on a particular case she dealt with. I felt this was very uncomfortable reading and would be shocking if the family of the victim were to read the book. Whilst I accept that gallows humour is perhaps inevitable, I felt it was really inappropriate to give an example of it actually being used; it was not needed.
Other than the one point above, I really enjoyed this book which gave a fascinating insight into the workings of forensics and a unique personal view of how it impacts on the people who do the work, which we do not normally see.
Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for a Kindle copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.