If you’ve just finished reading my review of Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell, you might be wondering, how did forensic thrillers become such a dominant genre? Because today it’s everywhere, from TV shows like CSI, Bones, Silent Witness, to countless crime novels lining the shelves. But it wasn’t always like that. Someone had to start it.
Before the Forensics
To understand where the forensic thriller came from, it helps to look at what crime fiction looked like before it existed. The golden age of British crime fiction was built on logic puzzles and clever deduction. The detective solved crimes by reasoning, by reading human behaviour, by outwitting everyone in the room. The physical evidence was there, but it was almost incidental. What mattered was the puzzle.
The move towards more grounded, procedure-driven crime fiction started gradually in the mid 20th century with the rise of the police procedural. Writers like Ed McBain, with his 87th Precinct series beginning in 1956, started moving crime fiction away from the lone genius detective and towards the reality of how investigations actually work: teamwork, bureaucracy, evidence, dead ends.
But the science was still secondary. Forensics as we know it – DNA analysis, trace evidence, toxicology – was either in its infancy or not yet part of mainstream crime investigation at all.
Patricia Cornwell Changes Everything
Postmortem, published in the 90s, was the first bona fide forensic thriller, and it paved the way for an explosion of entertainment featuring forensics across film, TV, and literature. Cornwell didn’t just write a crime novel that happened to include forensics, but she built the entire story around the science. Dr Kay Scarpetta’s medical examiner’s office is the engine of the investigation. The lab is where the answers live.
What made this possible was Cornwell’s background. She sold her first novel while working as a computer analyst at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. Therefore, that authenticity is what made Postmortem feel unlike anything readers had encountered before.
Cornwell is credited with single-handedly creating the forensic science crime fiction genre. A bold claim, but it’s hard to argue with when you read the book and then look at everything that came after it.
The Ripple Effect
The impact of Postmortem on popular culture is genuinely hard to overstate. In the decade that followed its publication, forensic crime fiction exploded. Kathy Reichs introduced forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan in 1997’s Déjà Dead, which later became the TV show Bones. Tess Gerritsen, Jeffery Deaver, and a wave of others brought forensic science to the centre of their crime narratives.
And then came television. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation launched in 2000 and became one of the most watched shows in the world, with multiple spin-offs. Silent Witness in the UK, Crossing Jordan, Forensic Files, the genre that Cornwell created in a single novel had become a global entertainment phenomenon within a decade.
There’s something deeply satisfying about forensic crime fiction that the puzzle-based mystery doesn’t always deliver: the feeling that science is on the side of justice. The evidence doesn’t lie. The body tells the story. In a world that can feel chaotic and unfair, there’s a quiet comfort in the idea that the truth is recoverable. And even the most careful killer leaves something behind.
Scarpetta embodies this. She’s not brilliant in the way Hercule Poirot is brilliant. She’s brilliant because she’s rigorous, methodical, and refuses to look away from what the evidence is telling her, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Where to Start
If the forensic crime sounds like your kind of reading, here’s where I’d suggest:
Start with Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell. It’s the origin point, and Scarpetta is a protagonist worth knowing from the beginning.
From there, Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs is the natural next step. Similar forensic rigour, different setting, and Brennan is a fascinating character in her own right.
If you want something more recent, The Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen or The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver both carry the forensic crime tradition forward in slightly different directions. Gerritsen more medical, Deaver more procedural and puzzle-driven.
And of course, if you haven’t already, there are now 26 books in the Kay Scarpetta series. You’ve got some reading ahead of you.
