Last month, my local library recommended a book called Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass. I wondered what a body farm was, and after I did some internet-searching, I was super-excited to check out this book!
The Body Farm, or more accurately known as the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility in Knoxville, is an actual place. A morbid place to some, but truly is a one of a kind research facility that studies human decomposition for not only anthropological purposes, but also to provide assistance to "the State Medical Examiner System for the District Attorney General's Office, arson investigators, and various state, local, and national law enforcement agencies and county medical examiners for over thirty years".
This book was great! The authors are actually a team: Dr. William Bass, founder of the program at the University of Tennessee, and Jon Jefferson, a journalist. The main character in the book is Dr. Bill Brockton (basically the literary version of Dr. Bass) who is asked to assist in a case outside of Knoxville. The small town where the body is found is in East Tennessee....a remote mountain community with many secrets of its own. As Dr. Brockton gets more involved, so does the level of danger that surrounds him.
I love a good mystery. The characters were great, many based on real-life people. And the science is great! Think CSI on paper... only better than the show. I will definitely be checking out other books in the series!
Comments