Teasing Secrets from the Dead: My Investigations at America’s Most Infamous Crime Scenes

At times difficult to read because of the content, as a medical person I appreciated the authentic descriptions. I felt the entire book , chapter by chapter, was so well written and extremely interesting. I have often read books where I came upon a phrase and cringed at the lack of editing, but not once did that happen here even with the complexity of the descriptions.

The author, Emily Craig earned a Ph.D. in forensic physical anthropology from the University of Tennessee and became Kentucky's state forensic anthropologist. She served with the Kentucky Medical Examiner's Office until her retirement in 2010. While working on her Ph.D, she spent time on Dr. William Bass's famous Body Farm. If you've read any or all of Dr. Bass's fictional accounts of the Body Farm (co-authored with Jon Jefferson), you'll have a good idea of what "Teasing Secrets from the Dead" is about, except the yuck factor is much higher. Example:"Skull fragments and teeth often filter down into the base of the skull, the neck, or even the victim's decomposing chest cavity, and then I have to grope around to find them, feeling through dark brownish-green tissues that resemble nothing so much as chocolate pudding into which someone has stirred a few cups of chunky vomit."Even Dr. Craig is grossed out by maggots, but she's learned to live with them. There's a scene in the autopsy room, where "tens of thousands of maggots [are] boiling up out of the chest cavity like suds overflowing from a washing machine." And that isn't even the grossest part. The grossest part is when the maggots start crawling up her arm and "migrating up toward my face, with its tempting facial openings."Anyone who thinks he or she might be interested in becoming a forensic anthropologist needs to read this book.Dr. Craig applies her training to down-home Kentucky murders, but she has also been called in on national tragedies such as the Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995) that killed 168 people, the deaths of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas (April 1993), and the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001. The amount of information she is able to 'tease' from bone fragments, teeth, and other bits of what was once a human being is truly amazing. As a writer, she has the gift of putting you right there in the autopsy room, on the muddy river bank, or down a claustrophobic mine shaft wherever remains have been found. This is a very compelling read.

Emily Craig is so smart; I really admire her and love the book that she wrote.

Very enjoyable and well written. True crime candy! Smaller print—a lot for your money.

Totally interesting and fascinating book - I could hardly put it down. The only drawback was getting past the author's rather obvious sense of self admiration and conceit. Many times it was implied that Ms Craig was the only intelligent person in the room, and was always letting the reader know how great she was. Granted, she is obviously a very sharp and vastly experienced scientist, and I am in awe of her accomplishments and knowledge. It just wasn't necessary to keep proving it to the reader. Not a very endearing trait, I must say. Otherwise, a terrific book.

Very well written and particularly the last chapter about Ground Zero really hit home. Really shows the inside view of the work that is done to identify victims. Highly recommend.

Wow this book is intense, emotional, clinical, and unflinching. It’s a beautifully written account of the study of forensic anthropology and how it is used to identify victims of crimes and disasters. I found the parts about her training particularly interesting as it sounds like such a unique combination of art and science.Be careful if you’re squeamish though. I’m an EMT and I was even a bit taken aback by some of the descriptions of decomposing corpses, but it didn’t feel gratuitous at all to me. The last chapter about the author’s work leading the morgue triage night shift team after 9/11 was particularly poignant and I just had to sit for a bit to process everything.Incredible book and I’d highly recommend to anyone interested in medicine, law enforcement, science, true crime, etc.

I am a retired RN and was a nurse for 38 years. In the course of my career, I have, on occasion, had to deal with wounds and diseases that would make a normal person nauseated or even faint. (This actually happened once when I demonstrated a wound dressing on a patient with gangrene to a group of student nurses.) I have even dealt with a type of wound debridement that actually uses live maggots.Even so, just in reading this book, I had to take it in small steps and it took me a week to finish it. At the same time, I was very appreciative of the detail in the writing. However, I'm not sure I would ever recommend this book to just anyone.

The book is very well written and very informative as far as what their job actually entails and how to literally tease secrets from the dead, it also tells stories of some of the cases they worked on and it was fascinating as well as sad to read because it does deal with murder.

Fantastic overview of cases related to the birth of one of law enforcement's tool for crime solving.

I loved this story - well writttne by someone in the top of her field and written so anyone could understand it

A fascinating story told in a non-assuming narrative. It's a pleasure to read.