I struggled through this but it is so dated and old. As a historical curiosity, it's interesting but given the massive changes that exist within the field of pathology over the last 51 years, it's not truly that interesting. I wish I'd seen the copyright date before I requested it. Additionally, I feel, given the me too movement's popularity at roughly the same time as this re-release, some sensitivity by the publisher could have been shown. The accounts of rape where the author denounces the victims as frauds were hard to read. Knight implies that because one woman lies all of us are liars. There are no statistics to back up his comments. I'm sorry but this book is just horrible and outdated with little currency for anyone reading it past 1972.

This is a re-release from the early 70's and unfortunately it's severely outdated. In some types of works it's not much of an issue but it was really apparent in this book. I did enjoy the fact that they included samples of some cases and what a coroners duties consist of.

Written by Bernard Picton, or as mentioned on a Kindle Edition of the same book content, by the well rated fiction author Bernard Knight labeled as "Written under a pseudonym by a practising full-time forensic pathologist". This edition has not been updated or edited since original in 1971. Words are run together making reading difficult and sentence structure is outdated. I found the writer's aire to be stuffy, bigoted and whose opinion seemed to devalue women. Numerous comments gave me the feeling that his opinion was the rape victims whose bodies are discussed were most likely young girls trying to entrap a man, or even suggesting that the victim in that type of crime was usually just a prostitute. As mentioned by other reviewers, there is no academic references or justification for his statements other than his own opinion and personal experiences. I tortured through the book as I had agreed to read it for NetGalley.
Full Disclosure: I was allowed to read a copy of this book for free as a member of NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review. The opinions I have expressed are my own and I was not influenced to give a positive review.

A book written in 1971 and still contains old, obsolete and out of date information.

Fascinating book

I love medical memoirs and have read a few concerned with forensic pathology before so I was excited to find a new book out on the subject. I felt a little bit disappointed though to discover that this book has actually been published before. More to the point-in 1971. This seems to be a re-issue, just as it was as some info is definitely out of date. I think it needs to be made clearer that this book is a historical memoir or for the author to revise and update it would be the best way to go.

Having said all that, I certainly enjoyed reading this for the most part. I found it fascinating and very interesting. There were some facts and figures that were new to me despite it being written so long ago. I found it particularly interesting reading about how they determine sex, age, height etc. The dental info was also very interesting to me as my sister is a dental nurse. I love crime fiction and I love reading about true crime cases. I love behind the scenes books such as this, ones where you can really learn something. The book was engaging, easy to read, and not too technical for the non-medical. I really enjoyed learning about all this. I think for what I wanted it for it was absolutely fine; I’m not a doctor or nurse or anyone medical, I just want to read about all walks of life and love to expand my knowledge so it didn’t matter so much if something wasn’t accurate to today’s standards of how they do certain tests.

When the book is mentioning 'the modern way' etc, you're not sure whether that still stands or whether things are done differently now. I can't see the point of re-releasing this without saying something like ‘revised and updated’. You can't settle into reading it and you are constantly wondering what will have changed since then and not apply now. I find books like these fascinating. Medical science is moving on all the time though so if a book is a new release, it should be updated to keep up with the times.

Because of the date issue I found it difficult to settle into at the beginning but soon it became exceedingly interesting and I was hooked.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley for review purposes.

As someone who has been in the medical field for my adult life, this was a very well written and interesting read. It was intriguing to hear about the internal processes involved in forensic pathology.

This book was written under a pseudonym by a UK forensic pathologist with over 30 years experience. The author explains the science and technology behind solving crimes and the impact other areas eg legal system and forensic tools have on forensic practises. Topics are covered in detail and include legal obligations, crime scene procedures, problems determining cause and/or time of death as well as death of infants and children. Real and fictitious examples are used to illustrate processes, the value of accuracy, observation and the important role other professionals play in the process. One of the fictitious examples involves a forensic pathologist named Dr Crippen. This quite amused me knowing the real life one worked in some sort of medical capacity, murdered his wife and buried the body parts in his cellar.
Most of the book was written in an easy to read style though I found a few parts a little heavy going (technical) but not enough to detract from my enjoyment. I think one of the reasons he wrote the book was to make people aware that forensic aspects included in novels and on the screen are usually far from real life.
Having always had a keen interest in the body and medical related matters I thrived on the content. I particularly enjoyed the crime scene and mortuary details and how it all plays out in court. Incredible to think some very small detail may break continuity of evidence depending on how it is handled. Also, I can only imagine how difficult it would have been (probably still is) for forensic pathologists to reconcile scientific and legal aspects of the investigation process. Prior to this book I was not aware how many factors had to be considered if their job is to be done properly.
Be aware the book was first published in 1971 and the content doesn’t appear to have been updated since, Technological advances in the last 30 years eg computers and programming would have reduced a lot of the manual processing and more recently the introduction of DNA capabilities having the greatest impact. Don’t let this put you off as the book is still an interesting read. The only thing I feel the book lacks is a few photos and/or diagrams to enhance the content.
This book is recommended for readers with an interest in the field, those who would like to learn more and others who need to be reminded how far their profession has come, in some ways at least. Some people may be interested to know the author is best known for the Crowner John Mysteries series and I have made a note on my To Read list.

This book was probably much more interesting when it was originally published in 1971, but I spent much of the time I was reading it wonder how relevant it is to today. Technology has changed so much and I'd rather read science and tech books from the last decade, not the last century. Fairly disappointed in this and could not recommend it.

This book was mainly about British coroners. The book is interesting to a point. Maybe due to it being about Britain coroners, it was long reading. The few stories that are included were very interesting. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for my honest review.

Fascinating and extremely yhorough discussion of all the forensic situations a coroner might encounter. Not for the queasy, it runs the gamut from accidental death to dismemberment and worse. But if this subject interests you, prepare to be informed. The writing is accessible on a layman's level. That is a relief, as parsing out medical jargon usually makes the going impossible. Quite a few of the beginning pages describe a pathologists legal situation, which bored me. However, for those doing a paper on such it is really great. I enjoyed the book but of course found it daunting emotionally at times. NO TYPOS. Eminently correct language. Recommended.