The Life Mysterious

When you’re with Harold Goldwhite, life seems like one big whodunit. The retired Cal State L.A. chemistry professor has consulted on tricky forensics questions for law enforcement agencies and still lectures regularly on “murder and molecules.” A native of England who has a PhD from Cambridge, Goldwhite is also a lifelong mystery fanatic who owns about 600 mystery volumes and figures he’s read a good 5,000. Despite his passion for science, the South Pasadena resident is a crime fiction traditionalist who prefers the genre’s pre-WWII “golden age” classics over the lab potboilers of the “CSI” era. The professor will cheerfully tell you that the loss of his hand in a lab explosion opened the door to a little consulting work on “The Hand,” Oliver Stone’s take on classic horror. We sifted through the clues during a recent interrogation.

Scientific methods have always appeared in crime fiction, but forensics seems to be a craze right now. Why?

I have a feeling that the advent of DNA technology has really been the breakthrough. The whole biotechnology movement and the fact that we can now type DNA from trivial amounts of material has sparked public interest in crime solution through scientific methods. A lot of this is bandwagon effect. The public seems to like [one show], and then you have more and more shows.

What might be a weakness of forensics?

I would say the chain of evidence. You have to have an absolutely foolproof, attack-proof chain of how the material was collected, how it was stored, who had access to it, what the security precautions were and so on. I don’t watch many “CSI”-type shows, but I don’t think this is featured very often. Yet in actual trial experience, it is one of the points that the defense counsels hit on all the time.

How will forensics change crime investigation?

I think the big advance will be the ability to do analysis on the spot. That will greatly reduce the risk of error or contamination. There’s a whole movement in analytical chemistry toward a laboratory on a chip. Future scientists will not be collecting their evidence and taking it back to a laboratory. They will be taking their laboratory to the site of the crime.

What about mandatory DNA submissions?

That’s one that the citizens of California in their wisdom have ruled will be the case. If you are accused, accused, of a felony, you have to give a DNA sample. I think that will be challenged.

Why don’t you watch “CSI” and other forensics-themed shows?

I’ve watched a few of the “CSI” shows, and most of the characters seem pretty cardboardy. You don’t see them having much of an inner life or an outer life, other than directed toward solving the case. I like characters who have a third dimension.

What do Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and other classic authors offer that you can’t get in the “CSI” era?

The detectives in these earlier periods were very rounded characters. Mind you, some modern writers are right on target with that. [Another] appeal is remoteness. A remote period is more of an escapist excursion than the worries and concerns of the 1990s and 2000s. Also, today there seems to be more emphasis on really nasty killers. Horrible people who are serial killers--”Silence of the Lambs” and that kind of stuff--and the horrible way in which people are dispatched and chopped up and so on is much more characteristic of modern detective fiction.

What is your all-time favorite mystery?

“The Moonstone,” by Wilkie Collins. The characters are remarkably well drawn and the mystery is profound and very difficult to untangle until you finish it. It’s told in a variety of voices, that is, different characters contribute to the telling of the story.

What’s the connection between your passion for forensic science and your passion for mystery fiction?

I find it very satisfying when science is applied to combat evil and support the good. Mystery fiction is one of the purest examples, I think, of good-versus-evil kinds of confrontations.

How many mysteries have you read where the butler did it?

Maybe one. The butler rarely does it.