Cause of Death: Forensic Files of a Medical Examiner

This book has potential. However, it suffers from zero editing - it's Edgar ALLAN Poe, for crying out loud! - and a juvenile writing style. Sometimes one feels the writer is on a roll and the editor in one's brain goes to sleep, but before long some monstrosity of a word salad presents itself, in the form of weather descriptions or references to literature/film. A couple are ok, we get the point!Yes, it's a horrific subject matter - and fascinating (or we wouldn't want to buy the book), but it's ok. You don't have to try to impress the reader with detailed personal descriptions (except of the morgue residents!) of sheriff deputies etc., stormy, gloomy, hot, cold, nasty weather on the autopsy day - we don't care about that either! Just forget the weather unless it has something to do with the cases being discussed! We don't care!Never, ever publish without an OUTSIDE editor (a writer who has himself for an editor is a fool). And e-book publishers - please try to keep at least a few blinks on the quality of the books, instead of only the quantity - of cash. Reading text that's sprinkled with"care-fully, joy-fully, sprinkl-ing" in the middle of a line (and thus no need to divide the word) is really ANNOY-ING.

R. Shultz's review pretty much nails it. This is not a bad book, but I was a disappointed to find the authors trying to paint a picture of ... well, everything. When I read a book like this, I want to learn medical stuff; I don't want to hear what music was playing in the morgue, and there are only so many times you can read about wintergreen oil before you start to wonder what this guy's editor was thinking (actually, whoever edited this book should probably be fired). Lots of repetition; you're told several times that the author is really into weightlifting, chess and Kinky Friedman, and more than once you're reminded that people working in the morgue and use wintergreen oil to mask the smell of death tend to develop an aversion to wintergreen flavored things. It's also very poorly organized and jumps around a lot, you'll be in the middle of learning about what happened to Patient X and suddenly he's telling you about another patient from 5 years ago for apparently no reason. He'll build up suspense - for example (and this is just an example I made up, this isn't from the book, I'm just trying to give you an idea of what's in there) - he'll set up a scene where the patient appeared to have died from a stroke, then throw in the question "but was it REALLY a stroke, or was it something more sinister?" build things up a bit and then it turns out no, they died of a stroke. That's fine and all, but it would have been more interesting to see at least a couple of cases where the cause of death turned out to be radically different from what it appeared to be in the beginning. I ended up having to skim quite a bit of it, looking for stuff about autopsies that were actually performed.So ... meh. Not terrible, but in retrospect I probably should have passed on it. I wish I could recommend buying this book, but I just can't.

Just finished the book. I know Dr. Cohle, he is very interesting and has a great sense of humor. I purchased his other book, and will start reading it soon.

I came here to write a review, only to find that R. Shultz of Chicago had already written it! I agree completely, and I don't think I can say it any better than Mr/Ms Shultz did. I wanted to like this book, but I could just not get through the extraneous drivel, repetition of cliches, poor organization of the chapters, inane jokes, and the author's pompous apologies for the inane jokes. I ended up doing a lot of skimming because I just didn't care what music accompanied each autopsy. The book should have been interesting, but it was boring. It would have greatly benefited from a good editor.

Stephen Cohle, is one of the highest regarded forensic examiners in the nation, we are lucky to have him practicing in Michigan and contribute his expertise to providing answers to many questionable and violent deaths. I first read his testimony in the Junior Bebee Jr. trial and will look forward to his writings in other books, one hopefully covering this trial. His humble, detailed but simple to read explanations of his work and science keep the reader on seat's edge and asking for more. Will actively search for additional writings.

Forensics is my passion (as I am studying to be a medical examiner) and I would recommend reading this book. The authors are very well educated and informative with their creativity and writing. This has been a most wonderful reading and would definitely state that anyone interested in forensics (even if your not going into it career wise) check out this book.

There are a lot of filler pages & not enough subject matter. I was expecting more detail on cases of a medical examiner/pathologist. The book seems to just skim over them & spends more time on home life & assistants.

Interesting.

The content of this book is fascinating, but unfortunately I find the book itself to be quite poorly written.I'm not saying I could do a better job, and actually I don't blame the author - it's the editor's fault! Repetition, self-indulgence and poor grammar in places make for an irritating read. However, for the price and the interesting content, still definitely worth a purchase!