Name: Teasing Secrets from the Dead
ISBN: 9781400049226

Emily A. Craig

A forensic anthropologist journeys to infamous crime scenes to describe her work on such cases as the Oklahoma City bombing, the World Trade Center disaster, and the Branch Davidian complex at Waco, Texas.

My Investigations at America's Most Infamous Crime Scenes

Teasing Secrets from the Dead

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I didn't realize reading the memoir of a forensic anthropologist who worked on cold case murders in my home state would make me nostalgic for home but it did. While some of Craig's writing is clunky--especially later in the book when she is describing her colleagues at the 9/11 victim identifying process and wades into boomer romance novel writer levels of racialized cliche-- her strength as a writer really shines when she lets her hyperfocus take over to describe bones and the detective work used to deduce identity in detail. There is something satisfying out the detective work involved especially with some of the more esoteric cases she describes like the body uncovered in the banks of the ohio river, pretty much outside of my hometown. The book however is gruesome. Craig doesn't take any joy in talking about people dying horribly, but her descriptions of decay, wounds, and death are pretty frank. And I relate and appreciate her descriptions of the kind of mindset and self care she needed to employ to do this difficult work. Probably the most interesting chapters are the ones in Kentucky, and the one in Waco, where she helped identify David Koresh's cause of death. Fascinating from a science perspective but also fairly triggering. 

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

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