All That Remains: A Life in Death

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She begins the book with her medical training in university, what happens in a dissecting lab and how she felt standing before her first body. She also describes her childhood, her family, and the deaths of beloved family members, her first funerals. It took time, but as she became more skillful, her reputation began to grow and she began to be involved in more prestigious and important investigations, such as in gathering evidence of war crimes through forensic examinations of mass graves in war zones.

I truly loved all the different parts of the telling of her stories, her opining, what she knows, what she doesn’t know, frustrations, joys, and her passion for the work, her deeply felt calling for it and satisfaction at the opportunities and obligations it has provided her. I like the way she thinks, love her humor and am amazed at her tolerance for incredibly trying situations. Unpleasantness I would run from. Horrors that would slay my every ability to respond at all, and she breathes deeply and reaches for her gloves. I could no more think of this kind of work than I could read it straight through. There were times I had to stop and do something else.Could not finish. I honestly can’t discourage reading any of her work enough. Even basic facts are wrong, and written with such conviction that I can’t believe anything else. The one that bothered me particularly is that she says that the surgeon Henry Gray, the author of Gray’s anatomy, was from Aberdeen. He is from/worked in London. There’s another surgeon named Henry Gray, from Aberdeen, who was also well-known, though mainly for his wound excision during the First World War, some 50 years after the other one died. If you want to read a compassionate, beautifully written and honest book about death and what it takes to confront it on a daily basis, looked at from all its angles, fearlessly and without leaving any details out, in my view this book is a perfect start.

Reading this book is like watching your favorite crime series only much more down to earth and more realistic. Just as thrilling, because Sue has experienced a fair share of ghastly situations, but shows you the relevance of her work, and why respectful treatment is important. The programme was even more fascinating than I could have imagined and helped me discover more about both the process of identifying human remains and what kind of person it takes to do it. This book expands on much of what was in that interview, as well as adding more details about her life, work, and the cases in which she's been involved. It's a mish-mash of history, science, memoir, police investigations, cold cases, natural disasters, education and invention...not to mention some handy tips for would be murderers er...writers about procedure. For example, dismembering a body in certain ways cases too much leakage, making it harder to move and there really is a best way to remove a human head. And don't forget about the smell if you try to hide body parts in your cupboard or beneath your driveway (yes, she's seen this). Since the bathtub is well sized for a human body, people usually use it to cut up their inconveniently sized dead so Scene of Crime officers start their search there as a matter of course. Apparently it's hard to cut up/saw through a corpse without scratching the bath surface and it's very difficult to clean all the necessary drainage parts. Sadly, she didn't suggest better alternatives but I have these snippets of advice mentally shelved in case I ever need them. Which I won't, obviously. An engrossing memoir . . . an affecting mix of personal and professional' (Erica Wagner , Financial Times) There are a wide variety of cases offered to the reader in the course of this book. I'd rather people discovered the stories for themselves. However I would just say that the Kosovo chapter was far the hardest to read and made me shed a tear. It might well have been the one with most humour in too. Certainly the Indian Ocean Tsunami and the Kosovo chapters show just how determinedly outspoken the author can be although she appears to be listened too increasingly as well. I might be out of step with other reviewers who loved this book, no problem, I have a bookshop, I'm used to my customers not liking my recommendations and me not liking what they read, that is why we have such diversification in book subjects. (Unless the author is chasing money in which case it will be a Twilight situation with a million teenage vampire romances.)

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Walid Khalidi was born in Jerusalem, he was educated at the University of London and Oxford University. He taught at Oxford, the American University of Beirut, and Harvard. Khalidi is a cofounder of the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS, Beirut), of which he was general secretary until recently. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a cofounder of the Royal Scientific Society, Amman. He currently serves as President of the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPSUS, Washington, DC).

For fans of Caitlin Doughty, Mary Roach, Kathy Reichs, and CSI shows, a renowned forensic scientist on death and mortality. This unsentim­ental exploration has at its heart the conviction that we should not fear death but accept it Compelling, brave and extremely accessible.. A must for anyone who thinks about the basics of living and dying. And there are jokes as well. Rachel Joyce One might expect [this book] to be a grim read but it absolutely isn't. I found it invigorating!' (Andrew Marr, BBC Radio 4 'Start the Week')

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You are knowledgeable in terms of writing a novel, I really enjoyed it! Well done! ... If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to [email protected] or [email protected] Read more In All That Remains she reveals the many faces of death she has come to know, using key cases to explore how forensic science has developed, and examining what her life and work has taught her. Reading memoirs by people I have never heard of before is something I very much enjoy. The thought that each and every human being on this planet is leading their own life which is unique and distinct from all others is an unfathomable idea and yet so fascinating. At first I was hesitant with this book, because there is just no way around it that death is a topic that easily gets gruesome. But this book turned out to be so much more intriguing than I could have guessed up front. What impressed me most is that Sue’s warm personality is clearly present from beginning to end. You get to know her as a loving mother, a no-nonsense woman, and she never fails to keep in mind morality.

All That Remains provides a fascinating look at death - its causes, our attitudes toward it, the forensic scientist's way of analyzing it. A unique and thoroughly engaging book. Kathy Reichs, author of TWO NIGHTS and the Temperance Brennan series The last two thirds make for a solid, but not outstanding, addition to a shelf about death. Just know that you can gloss over the aforementioned sections and you won't miss a thing. The other aspect of her book that I vehemently disagreed with and, in my opinion, had no place in such a book was her mini-dissertation on why she believes people should be able to decide their own life spans. She uses chilling terms like when someone "no longer has value" "and "doesn't want to be a burden" or really just doesn't want to live anymore. Shouldn't they have the right to decide to end their life legally and safely? Hmmm...legal and safe...where have we heard those terms before?Part memoir, part science, part meditation on death, her book is compassionate, surprisingly funny, and it will make you think about death in a new light. Excellent, Awesome, Crucial for Health Workers, Scientists, Teachers, Philosophers and for anyone interested!!! Read more The book is closely based on the Colonial Parkway Killer, a suspected serial killer who is thought to have murdered 8 people in Virginia in the 1980s. In real life the cases are still unsolved though, as described in the true crime documentary Lovers’ Lane Murders from 2021. As Cornwell's novel made many believe that the Colonial Parkway murders had been solved, [2] father-daughter true crime authors Blaine Pardoe and Victoria Hester issued their book A special kind of evil in 2017, providing new information from the investigations. [3] Characters [ edit ] Having read 8 chapters, the majority of it is a glorified memoir of her work and serves solely to inflate her ego. It’s certainly not what it says on the tin. All That Remains is a crime fiction novel by Patricia Cornwell. It is the third book of the Dr. Kay Scarpetta series.