 Mystery: April 12, 2017 Issue [#8228] |
  Mystery
This week: I figured it out! Edited by: Arakun the twisted raccoon  
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Quote for the week: There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.
~Deepak Chopra |
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Gathering evidence is an important part of solving a mystery, but it is only the first step. After your characters have collected their evidence they need to figure out what it all means. In some ways, analyzing and interpreting evidence is a science, but in others, it is an art.
Evidence such as fingerprints, blood, hair and any trace materials found at a crime scene must be handled carefully before they can be analyzed and interpreted. Evidence that has been contaminated in any way is useless. If a sample bag breaks on the way to the lab, nothing in it can be used.
Investigators and analysts need to account for every step of the journey of a piece of evidence from the crime scene to the lab. Chain of custody documents are filled out with every transfer. Any time where the sample is unaccounted for means in might have been tampered with, rendering it useless.
The evidence collected at crime scene can give us a wealth of information, but it cannot tell us everything. DNA and trace evidence only have value if you have a suspect to compare them to. For example, you may find fingerprints on a murder weapon. If those prints belong to someone who is not under suspicion for other reasons, and does not have their fingerprints on file somewhere, they will not help you find the guilty party. Also, fingerprints, DNA, or trace evidence have little meaning if they belong to someone who lives in the place where the crime was committed or whose presence there is not out of the ordinary.
Evaluating witness testimony and suspect interrogation can be difficult, or in some cases nearly impossible. It is not always easy to tell if someone is lying or not. Even an innocent person may lie under the right circumstances.
Once your characters have gathered all their evidence, how will they interpret it? The way your characters read evidence depends on their personalities. For example, Jeffery Deaver's character, Lincoln Rhyme, is very analytical, trusting only evidence he can see or analyze with one of his machines. He puts little stock in witness testimony because he believes people's memories and their accounts of events cannot be trusted. Another of Deaver's characters, Kathryn Dance, is much more intuitive, and good at "reading" the true meaning behind what people say and how they say it.
In real life, investigators sometimes misinterpret clues, leading to a false conclusion. Even the most intelligent person is not right 100% of the time. Your characters will seem more human if you allow them to make some mistakes. False conclusions also might happen if the detectives do not have all the evidence. The true solution might only appear when the last piece of the puzzle is found.
Everyone has some biases that might interfere with correct interpretation of clues. Detectives are trained to be impartial, but sometimes a person may not even be aware that their thinking is biased. A detective might unwittingly be more suspicious of people who remind him of a killer he dealt with in the past. He might not even know what it is about the person that reminds him of the other character. Or he might not even consider an elderly person or someone in a wheelchair as a killer, because he assumes they would not have the physical strength.
Something to try: Write a mystery story which the characters solve in an unusual way.
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| Question for next time: If you were a detective, how would you go about solving your cases? |
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