Impeccably researched and vividly told, Fingerprints is a story packed with an extraordinary cast of individuals whose scientific breakthroughs helped solve one of the most brutal murders in English history and shaped our understanding of identity.
In 1905 an elderly couple were found murdered in their shop in Deptford, London. The only evidence at the scene of the crime was a sweaty fingerprint on a cashbox. Was it possible that a single fingerprint could be enough to lead to a conviction? Could the pattern of these tracks hold the secrets of the science of identification?
In the 1880s, Henry Faulds, a missionary in Japan, began to study the formation of the whorls, arches and loops on each finger and was the first to ask whether these traces could be the unique key to identifying every individual. Whilst police and scientists alike ignored Faulds' discovery, other thinkers were working on complex, alternative methods of identification.
Through the studies of Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's cousin, the study of fingerprints became the recognised science of dactylography. Through these stories, Beavan recreates a gripping narrative of rivalry, detection and a fascinating portrait of the nineteenth-century race to find a scientific method of identification.

'Fascinating, informative and as gripping as a great crime novel.' Simon Singh, author of The Code Book

All her life Reta Winters has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness with a loving family and growing success as a writer. Then her eldest daughter suddenly withdraws from the world to sit on a street corner, uncommunicative but for a sign around her neck bearing one word, "GOODNESS".

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