Criminal Investigation

This volume is designed to be a working hand-book for all engaged or interested in Criminal Investigation. It has, by special permission, been translated and adapted from the well-known work of Dr. Hans Gross, Professor of Criminology in the University of Prague and special lecturer on that subject in the University of Vienna. Translations of this work have already appeared in various languages, including French, Spanish, Danish, Kussian, Hungarian, Servian, and Japanese.

Few men are so well fitted, by training and experience, as Dr. Gross to compile a work like the present. He has, to use his own words in his introduction to the first German edition, been for many years “”body and soul” an Investigating Officer. As M. Gardeil, Professor of Criminal Law at Nancy, says, in introducing the French Translation to French Criminalists, Dr. Gross is “an indefatigable observer ; a far-seeing psychologist ; a magistrate full of ardour to unearth the truth, whether in favour of the accused or against him; a clever craftsman; in turn, draughtsman, photographer, modeller, armourer; having acquired by long experience a profound knowledge of the practices of criminals, robbers, tramps, gypsies, cheats, he opens to us the researches and experiences of many years. His work is no dry or purely technical treatise; it is a living book, because it has been lived.””

The aim of the adaptors has been, while omitting nothing of general or particular utility to any person investigating crime, no matter in what capacity or part of the world, to combine and include therewith a mass of information of peculiar interest in India. At the same time, they have attempted to apply many of the illustrative criminal cases and principles contained in the original work to the Indian point of view. Many sections of Dr. Gross’s work have been greatly enlarged and elaborated, and no pains have been spared to bring the whole quite up to date.