'Forensic Linguistics' contains detailed studies of all the major areas of the discipline, including the detection of plagiarism, the observation of style change, and an analysis of all of the most important types of forensic text, including ransom demands, suicide notes, hate mail, smear mail, trick mail, and terrorist mail.
Perhaps one of the greatest assets of the book is its discussion of specific forensic texts including the "stalker text" from John Hinkley, an excerpt from the Unibomber case, several 17th century Salem witch trial "confessions", Virginia Woolf's suicide note, and ransom notes from Carlos the Jackal, from the attempted Bletchley Park enigma machine heist, from the Lindbergh kidnapping and from the JonBenet Ramsey case.
Uniquely, Olsson looks not only at techniques for use in forensic linguistics per se, but also at how forensic linguistics can be of use to law enforcement and criminal justice professionals at the investigation level. This makes the book uniquely authoritative, giving it a practical "hands-on" appeal to linguists and non-linguists alike.
