Book Review: When the Dog's Don't Bark: A Forensic Scientist's Search for the Truth by Angela Gallop

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

When the Dogs Don’t Bark follows forensic scientist Angela Gallop as she discusses her 40 year career within the profession. What follows is an outline of a number of her most memorable cases interspersed with the history and development of forensic sciences within the UK and it’s importance in the conviction, and defense, of individuals accused of a variety of crimes. 

What immediately comes across while reading this is just how complicated and varied forensic science is. Far from standing in ditches collecting evidence from a crime scene, forensic scientists are wide reaching and branch into different specialties, from chemical, entomology, and one of the fastest growing - digital forensics. Often they must possess a thought process a little ‘outside the box’ too by taking the extra step of recreating scenarios in labs to determine the most probably outcome and unlock the truth about what happened at the crime scene. Two instances that stand out are when she mentions recreating the action of pushing a mop around a kitchen floor to exonerate a man accused of murder, and shooting a suspended pig carcass with a shotgun to discover where a specific shot went. 

Other than a few glimmers of interesting cases and scenarios, this was a rather dry book to get through unfortunately. A lot of time is spent describing the different kinds of forensic scientists there are, and the various techniques which are used. It’s very science based, and talks in great detail about methodologies. There’s also a lot of detail regarding Gallop’s professional career and various businesses, however I found this could have been condensed, as it really took away from the more interesting cases. I think the book was approached very much like a scientific report, using cases to back up Gallop’s explanations of various techniques instead of letting the cases speak for themselves. It feels almost clinical at times, and there’s just no heart to the stories. A lot of the cases she mentions, she states she doesn’t know the outcome, and this got very frustrating at times as it came across as feeling unfinished and a little emotionless. Perhaps some more of her own personal background may have helped here, as we learnt a lot about her professional life but hardly anything personal.

I do find the synopsis a little misleading, as there’s no real depth to any of the memorable cases, sometimes they consisting of only a few paragraphs, and they are rather few and far between. The bulk of the book is centered around Gallop’s career and her explanations of what forensic scientists do. In this regard it’s meticulous in its presentation, but it wasn’t what I was expecting at all. 

Interesting if you want to expand your knowledge of what forensic science is, but don’t go into it expecting lots of true crime stories or cases.