by Richard Shepherd
My Rating
Summary
As the UK’s top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right – and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?
From serial killer to natural disaster, ‘perfect murder’ to freak accident, Shepherd takes nothing for granted in pursuit of truth. And while he’s been involved in some of the most high-profile cases of recent times, it’s often the less well-known encounters that prove the most perplexing, intriguing and even bizarre. In or out of the public eye, his evidence has put killers behind bars, freed the innocent and turned open-and-shut cases on their heads.
The Review
The second book I sat down to read this year is a memoir by Dr Richard Shepherd about his life as a forensic pathologist. It’s a brutally honest insight into the darker side of medical science and how you can help the world, but it comes at a cost.
Dr Shepherd tells his life story, with over 25,000 post-mortems under his belt, in a frank yet empathetic way. Outlining the competitive office life he had when he first got into the profession, the way ‘old school’ policing and detective work differs from today, to his specific field becoming almost obsolete in the newer age of medicine.
I was pulled into the grisly details of famous disasters such as The Hungerford Massacre (1987), Princess Diana’s death (1997), 9-11 (2001) and the London Bombings (2005). Plus the everyday tragedies that struck the lives of so many, from murder to neglect to natural causes I read about the stages of decomposition, SIDS, to a man dying from bruising alone. Each case was approached with reverence, empathy and care.
For me, the most interesting part of his story is the difference in the way policing changed over the years. From cops trying to coax a post mortem result, and forensic opinion, to match their already preconceived belief that their suspect is the one. Over the years Dr Shepherd went from being a go-to for science but also his opinion on the actions that led to the victim being on his slab – to a new era of policing where the evidence goes through many channels, ones that don’t ask him for his opinion over a cup of tea and a cigarette. His subsequent feeling of becoming a relic.
The other half of the story, being told concurrently, is the effect his life in the hospital surrounded by dead people had on his family affairs. We learn about his parental unit growing up, his marriage and trying to be a good dad to two kids, to the culmination of 40 years of witnessing mans inhumanity towards one another resulting in PTSD.
It’s easy to get absorbed into the book, to not want to put it down. I definitely recommend it for lovers of the macabre and medicine alike.
In reading this book I ticked off one of my reading challenge books for this year, too!
Where to buy
Book Depository | Amazon US | Amazon UK | Waterstones | Bookshop.org
If a medical memoir isn’t your thing maybe check out these Beauty and the Beast retellings to find something to sink your teeth into!
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