Roxana Ferllini

I was disappointed that this was a book on disasters & killings, not on Forensic Pathology as described. It started out with some decent descriptions of the science, but it quickly dissolved into simply describing disasters in fair detail & then saying, "forensic pathologists helped..." without really saying how. The Case Studies were pretty good, if you want to know about murders & disasters. Generally a page or two, they gave a good overview of some of the more gruesome moments in our history from famous murders to serial killers, transportation accidents & political killings. Not what I was reading the book for, though. The writing was very uneven & I felt that entire blocks of text were re-used in various sections. In some places her verbiage was extremely technical while in others she dumbed it down & repeated herself until I felt a 3 year old could comprehend it. She defines a forensic pathologist & then confuses the issue throughout the book, often refering to a 'multi-discipline' approach in vague ways.The start of the book had pictures & text out of order - pictures & side bars were showing up way before the text called for them. This was fixed by the end of the book, but it seemed to be an attempt to present eye-catching, gory events quickly to capture the reader's interest.There wasn't a single reference to Bill Bass or Death's Acre in the entire book, which is pretty amazing since Bass & his testing site have made a huge contribution to the science. When Bass started out, as an anthropologist, the field was full of guess work, especially in regards to soft body decomposition & insect activity. While Ferllini points out how important these are, she fails to credit Bass for pioneering the field.The pictures were excellent in most cases. Lots of them & in excellent color. There were a few extraneous pictures that were explained only by their blurb, no real explanation as to why we got to see them or how they helped.Overall, it wasn't a very good book, certainly not what I thought I was buying. I think I'll keep it, unless someone else has something better to trade, because it does have some good pictures & interesting case histories, but I generally feel ripped off.… (mere)