Book reviews /Analytica Chimica Acta 288 (1994) 279-284 281

chemists and the inclusion of some typographical errors such as the title “Gas Chromatrophs” on p. 292 is unfortunate.

My criticisms of the book are few and I would highly recommend toxicologists.

it to practical chemists and

G.M. Greenway

Stephen G. Schulman (Ed.), Molecular Lumines- cence Spectroscopy. Methods and Applications: Part 3, Wiley, New York, 1993 (ISBN o-471-51580-9). xii + 467 pp.

This third volume comprises nine chapters on diverse aspects of luminescence. The first is a rather brief (23 pp.) account of chemilumines- cence by Nakashima and Imai, and is followed by a most useful discussion of fluorescent probes for local physical and structural parameters (60 pp.) by Valleur, and a comprehensive description of photochemical fluorometry by Aaron (47 pp.). A short (16 pp.) chapter on organized bile salt me- dia for luminescence analysis (McGown) and a detailed description of the very interesting phe- nomenon of spectral hole burning (80 pp., Holli- day and Wild) precede the currently topical ac- count of near-infrared luminescence spectroscopy (23 pp., Akiyama) and a useful description of microspectrofluorimetry on supported planar membranes (53 pp., Tamm and Kalb). The book concludes with a brief account of clinical applica- tions of fluorescence spectroscopy, including fluo- roimmunoassay (15 pp., Schenk) and a welcome extensive review of laser excited molecular fluo- rescence (121 pp., Hofstraat, Gooijer and Velthorst). This last article includes descriptions of the lasers and the detection systems used, applications to various types of analytes, low tem- perature spectroscopy and flow cytometry.

This is a well-produced text, which covers many of the topics of current interest in analytical luminescence, and is a worthy addition to the well-received previous volumes in this series.

Alan Townshend D. Thorburn Burns

W. Bertsch, G. Holzer and C.S. Sellers, Chemical Analysis for the Arson Investigator and Attorney, Htithig, Heidelberg, 1993 (ISBN 3-7785-1890-9). xiii + 525 pp. Price DM198.00.

This monograph aims to present timely techni- cal information to chemists and laboratory per- sonnel and to provide a technical background for the community of fire loss adjustors, investiga- tors, attorneys and judges, most of whom have had little education in chemistry. The authors have thus taken on a novel, difficult and challeng- ing task, one which essentially requires two books within one text.

Chapter I, “Fire Investigation, Accelerants and Chemical Analysis. How do the pieces of the puzzle get together?“, provides an overview of the entire field of chemical analysis as it relates to the determination of accelerants in fire debris. Chapter 2 “Fire Matter and Accelerants” deals with basic chemistry and physics of fire per se. Chapter 3 “Laboratory Methods”, is a compre- hensive review of accelerant recovery from debris and chromatography with particular reference to selective detectors. This is primarily directed at experts as are chapters 4 and 5, “Methods Devel- opment, Quality Assurance and Laboratory Pro- tocol” and “Evaluation and Interpretation of Data”, respectively. This latter section has a most useful introduction to pattern recognition tech- niques.

Considerable and successful efforts at bridge building have been made between expert and laypersons by extensive cross referencing and the provision of a comprehensive glossary and a li- brary of chromatograms of the common types of accclerants encountered in practice. The authors are to be congratulated on the technical content and on the success of their approach, which will aid communication between technical experts and those involved in aspects of the investigative and judicial processes following accidental or deliber- ate fires as well as be invaluable in the training of new entants to the subject area.