American Sherlock

Luke S. May played a significant role in the development of scientific methods of crime investigation. Although basically self-taught in scientific matters, May spent over a half century practicing scientific crime detection and built a solid reputation among police agencies and attorneys in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada as a serious and effective scientific investigator. This reputation as "e;America's Sherlock Holmes"e; also led to his being consulted on the establishment of the first full service public American crime laboratory at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, and on a laboratory for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.When May began, few people, anywhere, used scientific tools to investigate crime. Except for a couple of minimal installations in Europe, there were no crime labs. So to solve his cases - criminal and civil - May improved or invented techniques in every area of forensic science in the era before public crime laboratories. Along the way, he exchanged ideas with many other well-known crime fighting pioneers.American Sherlock: Remembering a Pioneer in Scientific Crime Investigation is the biography of this innovative criminologist, giving a case-based account of his life and honoring him as one of the pioneers of scientific crime detection.