When detectives come upon a murder victim, there's one thing they want to know above all else: When did the victim die? The answer can narrow a group of suspects, make or break an alibi - even assign a name to an unidentified body. Cases can be won or lost on the claims of forensic scientists, in societies that retain the death penalty, suspects can lose their lives.
But outside the world of crime fiction, time-of-death determinations have remained famously elusive, bedevilling forensic pathology throughout history.
Tracing her story from the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians, Jessica Snyder Sachs shows how criminal investigators and scientists have made use of an extraordinary variety of indicators: ghoulishly investigating rigor and algor mortis, rates of bodily decay, the contents of stomachs, the degeneration of eyes and infestations of blowflies and maggots.
Today, scientists are approaching the problem from all fronts, using DNA testing and other high-tech investigative methods, while nature is proving as productive an ally as technology; plants, chemicals and insects found near the body are turning out be the fiercest weapons in the crime-fighting arsenal.
The fascinating story of the 2000-year-old search to pinpoint time of death, Sachs' book is also the terrible and beautiful story of what happens to our bodies when we die.
