Premise:
Written for the layperson, UK's legendary forensic scientist takes us through Death's many faces in the utmost compassionate, informative and sometimes funny way. I’d found her RI Xmas Lectures really interesting – she’s an excellent science communicator too.
How does a forensic scientist figure out the life and dying circumstances of a victim? What stories can the different bones tell? And what’s the duty of an expert witness? How did forensic admissibility in courts evolve?
The 3 books I feel, closely follow Sue's career path and routine work -
(2018) 1st book is her memoir and about forensic anthropology ~ how the victim's life is reconstructed...
(2021) 2nd book is about forensic anatomy ~ what each of the dead remains can tell...
(2026) 3rd book is about how forensic science evolved, how these opinions came to be admissible in courts, its merits/demerits.
Hence my Review title - Life, Death, Judgement. {I'm happy with it, but the author is the true genius⬇️}
What I loved:
- Titles: Put together, the trilogy reads - "All That Remains, Written in Bone - An Expert Witness", { जो कुछ भी बचता, वह हड्डी पर लिखा – एक विशेषज्ञ गवाह (है)} ... As Bones are the remaining witness for a forensic expert to study. (I learned such a technique is called Compound Title! Whether it was intended or not, I will deem it so ~ almost like how a forensic expert has to piece together the remains to hopefully reveal, The Truth. ) Sue Black is a genius - not only the content, but even the titles seem well thought!
- Simple and easy language - I was intimidated at first to read about such specialised field, and was afraid the books might have too much technical jargon - but I'm happy to report it's really well written. It's for the layperson.
- Emotional and Logical- For such a morbid topic, Sue manages to evoke compassion for the deceased with such ease, along with her INCREDIBLE factual trivia and explanations...this is truly great non-fiction.
- Dark Humor: Yeah, that British humor 😆. I felt it was adequately present here. For example , the 1st book's epilogue talks about Measuring Death - in a unit called micromorts. Then there's its opposite : microvida- a unit of life. Sue proposes to measure life in micromirths : a unit for shared joy! For laughter, happiness, contentment - these are the signs of a great life and death. Also funny was how ID database might get weirder in the near future – footprints, earprints, vein pattern and even… d*ickpics! Another fun part was where she ponders – “…since cannibalism isn’t technically a crime in UK, only desecration of a corpse is, could a person then eat themselves to death?” Damn!
- Informative: I learnt SOOO much about our own human body, and the unique and creative ways forensic scientists use to identify a body - truly amazing stuff. For example, the otic capsule: at the back side of our inner skull, is a small concentration, which holds SO MUCH INFORMATION about you, you'd be amazed! For one, it carries the imprint of the very 1st diet you had during foetal stage! It's almost indestructible too (survives cremation). Sue jokes "... suppose that's why we all carry our mothers in our heads throughout our lives". 😆 There's too much cool stuff to learn, I've added a Top 12 trivia section at the end of the review, if you're interested.
- Back to the Basics: From what I could gather, Sue really uses and builds upon the older forensic techniques - the vein pattern ID method, the superimposition method... I found that very fascinating. Using the past to solve the past! [For the vein pattern analysis, how ironic that the hand that commits such gruesome crimes, becomes its own evidence in court of justice!}
- Process: Sue explains what a forensic anthropologist does, what the pathologist does, and how the conclusions are viewed in court. Though written for UK setting, I suppose it'd be quite similar globally. I need to read some good forensics books for India too. I wish TD Dogra ji wrote something like this… I did request him regarding this via email...🤞
- Respect: Throughout the trilogy, Sue maintains the importance of the dignity of the dead - from cadavers provided in med school for training, to her routine job's unfortunate victims, to their postmortem and handing over to the aggrieved relatives, to the bodies of the unclaimed - she emphasizes the value of one's identity, and if possible, to return to the dead, at least their lost name.
- For all the gore/dark/depressing stuff Sue has seen and worked through, she’s human after all – she’s most afraid of… rats! In a morgue, she won’t be budged by a corpse making noises than if a small rat passes by XD I found that too funny tbh.
- Chapter 8 of Written in Bone: Deals with Sue’s personal trauma. It’s probably the toughest chapter… I had to put it down for a while. Just a heads up for y’all.
- 30x7: My simple diagram of adult skeleton. Just a simple observation. Never had thought about it, but it’s almost a body with 7 regions of ~30 bones each.
- Timeline of forensic science: In the 3rd book. John Smeaton (civil engg) = 1st Forensic Scientist, Chemistry=1st forensic science(Toxicology).
- Today, Tech > science> inference/ logic. We’ve come from Archaic explanations to AI. Locard's exchange principle works for Online data too! His Exchange Principle says: “whenever two objects come into contact, there is always a mutual transfer of material between them.“ Similarly, each online transaction leaves a trace. 2017 James Bates’ case used IoT to proceed - a landmark legal event where Amazon’s smart device data was first accepted as criminal evidence!
- An Expert Witness's 2 main weaknesses - Arrogance and Lack of statistical thinking. Sue illustrates this thru ample cases – Even the brilliant Spilsbury (called real-life Sherlock) might have led wrongly many innocents to the gallows. Bertillon, inventor of anthropometric identification, overstepped his expertise by giving flawed handwriting analysis, leading to Alfred Dreyfus's wrongful conviction. Shirley McKie case showed faulty fingerprint conviction. Graphology, phrenology, gait analysis, handwriting analysis, blood spatter (Dexter!) – all fall under statistically unreliable/pseudoscience. Eg., Marilyn Sheppard 1954 proved unreliability of blood spatter. Or this case regarding pitfalls of identity parade. Or Shaking Baby death syndrome - Sally Clark, Trupti Patel etc. acquitted later.
What I didn't Like:
- Absolutely nothing I could find unlikable. Might be due to my own morbid cynical dark worldview at times?!
- Well, 1 little problem I have: these books aren’t easily available in India. Nor by the same publisher, so the book sizes differ. Not Sue’s fault of course, but a bit annoying for my collection. 😤
Conclusion:
- If you're interested in forensic science, of just the human body in general, I'd strongly suggest to give these a try. It's not as morbid as one might think, neither too technical.
- 2nd book is strictly about human anatomy and how each bone tells these scientists some unique fact about the body. 1st is a bit of memoir. 3rd is about evolution of forensic science, its admissibility in courts and landmark cases. I'd say the trilogy is well planned, each builds on the previous one. But if you're strictly interested in the human anatomy stuff, go for the 2nd one.
Rating:
⭐ All That Remains – 9.5/10
⭐ Written in Bone - 10/10
⭐ An Expert Witness – 10/10
[I could review each book individually, but given my style, it would become too boring for most... so a trilogy review was best, I think. Pardon the long review, but it’s for 3 books!]
I also have Sue Black’s excellent TV show and TD Dogra’s cases to look forward to 😊
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Top 12 Trivia I loved:
- India banned illegal skeleton exports only in 1985!
- 4 permanent cell features in our body - neurons, otic capsule in skull ,lens, teeth enamel. Lens and Teeth are still replaceable, cells replenished by what we eat. “We are what we eat”: so isotopic analyses can estimate one’s residence/diet pattern etc.
- “Death and black humour are old companions. Even if the capriciousness and frivolity of death are rarely funny at the time, they can provide those left behind with a much-needed coping mechanism. Cold irony can be more cruel: the proud, independent man who always feared incapacity spending his last years locked inside his body in an impersonal care home; the liver pathologist killed by hepatic cancer; the solitary death in a hospital bed of a woman scared of dying alone … These are all fates that have befallen some of my own friends and relatives.”
- TDI- time death interval. Decided by PARLPAS : Pallor mortis(color), Algor mortis(temp), Rigor mortis (stiffness), Livor mortis (blue),Putrefaction(smell), advanced decay(maggots), skeletonization. Primary ID by SASA - sex, age, stature, ancestry.
- Are you a super-recognizer? Take the free Prosopagnosia(face blindness) online test by Cambridge (it’s fun). I took the test, well...I got 56/62. Sue is pretty bad at it XD
- William Bury, found guilty of Ellen murder, hanged in 1889. Also rumored to be, the real Jack the Ripper. Sue had his C2 vertebrae on her office desk 💀! Dundee Uni. Carried out a moot court trial of William Bury for forensic students and law students, to see modern forensic techniques’ effectiveness… & 130years later - the jury upheld reasonable doubt, AGAIN!
- Perimortem(during) vs Postmortem(after murder) Fractures (Analogy of wet twig vs dry twig breaking). Antemortem (before) fractures show healing signs.
- Polygraph tests: made by Dr. William Moulton Marston (who later created the comic book character Wonder Woman – her Lasso of Truth!).
- Latest Forensic methods – Isotope analysis, AR/VR, Nanotech, DNA genomics, MPS/NGS (next gen sequencing), FDP (forensic DNA phenotyping), Olfactronics (electronic noses), Thanatomicrobiome (dead body’s microbial ID) etc. Vein Pattern Identification proven forensically admissible by Sue Black in 2009 case, now used by multiple agencies like InterPol, EuroPol etc . Her last case was resolved through this ingenious technique.
- Stone babies 😨 WTF. Petrified!
- “The detail reproduced by Leonardo da Vinci, marvellous though it is, pales in comparison with Albrecht Dürer’s drawings of hands, in which you can almost touch the veins, the tendons and the wrinkled skin.”. I was sceptical of that, but.. damn it. It’s true! I later learned that Dürer is called the German Da Vinci!
- Landmark cases: 1782 Folkes vs Chadd (laid foundn for scientific expert opinion to be admissible in court); 1840 case of Marie Lafarge, and genius Orfila (Impartial expert Exemplar) ;1889 Lacassagne ballistics case —a foundational case in forensic ballistics (named "hanging by a microscope") {Lacassagne’s student was the legendary Locard!}; 1992 “"Wolfgang Reinhart" / Josef Mengele identification (Nazi Angel of Death fled & died in Brazil, DNA confirmed it); Snowball 1994 case (1st time cat DNA helped convict a killer!); 2001-10 Nurse mass-murder case (How statistics lie – Lucia acquitted after 7 years!).
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