All That Remains: A Life in Death

Product Information

Ideal reading if you're a cheerful soul who likes to think about death. And think how it'll brighten your conversation on holiday. The Times

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. I think a good subtitle for this book would be something along he lines of "How to Read a Dead Body Like a History Book about the Life of That Specific Person."

About Me

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. Nearly two decades after his death, opinion remains divided as to whether Auberon Waugh was one of the great English humorists or a snobbish antediluvian. This anthology-cum-memoir, respectfully put together by his Literary Review colleague Naim Attallah, supports both arguments. Yet even Waugh’s detractors have to accept that at his best, he combined sharp wit with an intellectual force that might persuade even the most sceptical of readers to momentarily accept the “modest proposals” with which he took delight in scandalising the establishment. Stubborn Archivist Yara Rodrigues Fowler 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' A model of how to write about the effect of human evil without losing either objectivity or sensitivity . . . Heartening and anything but morbid . . . Leaves you thinking about what kind of human qualities you value, what kinds of people you actually want to be with' (Rowan Williams, New Statesman)

She includes a number of cold cases. Murders that have never been solved. I found this rather unsatisfying. I know her motive was to hopefully shed light on these murders and hopefully bring justice to the murderers and give the victims' families a sense of closure, but they leave the reader hanging, like an unresolved chord at the end of a symphony.

Customer reviews

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.