John Olsson

Readers who enjoy books about the English language will derive some pleasure from this book - for it focuses on the precise application of linguistics to crime solving - while lovers of the true crime genre might be somewhat disappointed that the names and locations of the cases have been changed to protect the innocent.

The writing style of the author tends to be a bit dry and technical, but this appears to be from a need for the author to simply state the facts of each case and stick to linguistics, rather than try his hand at popular psychology or amateur criminal profiling. Although such conscious avoidance of luridness might go against the grain of some pop true crime works, it is clear the author wishes to uphold the reputation of his profession.

But don't be put off - the book is divided into 23 chapters, one chapter for each different case, so this is a book that can be dipped in and out of on a chapter by chapter basis. Two standout chapters are "Is the Da Vinci Code Plagiarism?" and "Murder or Suicide?". Although Olsson wants the reader to decide for his/her self on whether Dan Brown plagiarised the work of an earlier novelist, it is pretty clear where he thinks the evidence points on this question, and his analysis behind how writers choose certain words to describe a scene is fascinating.

Equally fascinating, but very poignant, is the discussion about analysis of a suicide note for authenticity in "Murder or Suicide?". Olssen draws on the research of suicidologist Edwin Schneidman, combined with an analysis of a corpus of suicide notes from the British Transport Police to illustrate how popular misconceptions of suicide can be found in fake suicide notes.

It is interesting also how computer databases of words, such as the Oxford and Cobuild corpus, are now indispensable tools in much linguistic analysis. Even Google is used frequently by Olsson to create comparative frequencies of word usage.

At the very least, the reader will come away from this book with the knowledge that the words we use and the way we arrange them on the page can be like fingerprints when it comes to establishing authorship. Even when we are trying to pretend to sound like someone else, our words can in the end betray us.… (mere)