Tying lipstick smears from crime scenes to specific brands

It's a common forensic TV show trope: A crime is committed, there are no suspects, and then detectives find a faint lipstick mark. The sample is put in an evidence bag and sent to the lab. Then boom, they analyze it in minutes and get a lead. In real life, forensic analyses are not nearly as fast or straightforward. But scientists now report progress on the technical front. They have developed an improved method for lifting lipstick samples from surfaces and have found that gas chromatography is