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Title: What The Corpse Revealed by Hugh Miller ISBN: 0-312-97573-2 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 15 December, 2000 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.68 (19 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Begins with Murder and ends with Suicide
Comment: I'm not certain what 'acknowledged' means, as in the phrase, "He has written extensively for television and is an acknowledged expert on forensic medicine." However, that is how the book jacket on "What the Corpse Revealed" describes its author, Hugh Miller. Whether he's a physician or not, Miller tells a heck of a good story. Each one of his sixteen stories was solved through forensic detection, and the author has chosen incidents that are well off the radar of most true crime writers. Many of the murderers are women, and the final murderess in "What the Corpse Revealed" chooses a very unique method of killing herself while in prison. In fact, it's a very unique book through and through -- those British really know how to tell a 'good' murder story. Try this book, and then read "Forty Years of Murder" by Keith Simpson, if you won't take my word for it.
If you like true-crime stories with a scientific framework, or if you are a fan of well-told, suspenseful detective tales, "What the Corpse Revealed" will keep you reading well into night. My only advice: keep lots of lights on!
Rating: 2
Summary: pulp fiction?
Comment: The jacket of What the Corpse Revealed proclaims Henry Miller as "the author of many nonfiction books and several successful novels." This book had me wondering which category he was aiming for: nonfiction book or True Detective Stories magazine.
The cover, complete with glowing reviews from Publishers Weekly, lead me to believe this was a serious book on the ever-increasing role of forensic science in modern criminology. The preface, however, tells another story. Here Miller reveals that "the names of the characters, places, and certain incidents and photographs... have been changed and/or fictionalized." This information is repeated in a note to the reader immediately following the preface, making his claim of the forensic details being genuine hard to take seriously. The alphabetical index in the back lends an air of legitimacy to the book, though referencing material that may or may not be "changed and/or fictionalized" seems pointless.
While entertaining, this collection of 16 stories read like a cheap detective novel. The stories themselves are indeed fascinating, but I found them impossible to read without wondering just how much truth, if any, they contained. The details of the forensic procedures used to solve these "cases" may be technically accurate, but they were lost in the film noire, dime-store style of storytelling. The stories are all fairly predictable, thanks to an abundance of stereotyped villains, persistent gumshoes and thick-headed cops.
What the Corpse Revealed was informative in one respect; I now know where the expression "you can't judge a book by its cover" came from. I'll be more careful next time I go book shopping.
Rating: 1
Summary: THIS BOOK IS FICTION!
Comment: This book was recommended to me as a book related forensic pathology/forensic anthropology, my favorite reading areas. When I settled down to read it, the "Note to the Reader" was the first clue I had that the book was ficitious: "This book not intended to portray, and should not be read as portraying, actual persons, living or dead. Yet, on its cover it says "True Crime", what I took to be a tacky way of saying "Non-Fiction".
Whatever. - bONNY
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Title: Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner by Michael M. Baden ISBN: 0804105995 Publisher: Ivy Books Pub. Date: 28 March, 1990 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Casebook of Forensic Detection: How Science Solved 100 of the World's Most Baffling Crimes by Colin Evans ISBN: 047128369X Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 16 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Forensic Casebook : The Science of Crime Scene Investigation by Ngaire E. Genge ISBN: 0345452038 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 27 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Forensic Science of C.S.I by Katherine M. Ramsland ISBN: 0425183599 Publisher: Boulevard (Trd Pap) Pub. Date: 04 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Dead Reckoning: The New Science of Catching Killers by Michael Baden, Marion Roach ISBN: 0684852713 Publisher: Fireside Pub. Date: 04 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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