Reviews - Holtak vallatója: Nagy-Britannia első számú törvényszéki kórboncnokának emlékei – avagy élet a halál közelében

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Holtak vallatója: Nagy-Britannia első számú törvényszéki kórboncnokának emlékei – avagy élet a halál közelében

Unnatural Causes wasn’t at all what I expected. I would describe it as the memoirs of Dr Richard Shepherd. I was so intrigued to learn of the work involved in being a pathologist on top of the post mortem day job. It seems like a really tough career! Dr Shepherd talks about the impact this job had on his personal life and also goes into detail about the people he has helped and the trauma he has witnessed. I would thoroughly recommend it, even to someone who isn’t interested in medical books as it didn’t feel like I was reading his diary.

malinowy's review against another edition

3.0

The way this book was presented made it sound a lot more interesting than it was in the end. I find the subject interesting and was looking forward to reading about how forensic pathology has evolved over the years, what has changed, what things reveal the cause of death. And I guess I got some of that, but it took forever to get to the point. Shepherd spends a lot of time talking about his childhood and the journey leading up to his profession, which makes sense, but could have been told in fewer pages. And while I understand a job like his will have an effect on one's personal life, that too took a big chunk of the book. The actual cases, once we got to them, were interesting though told in bit of a dry manner. And while the blurb sells some big, famous cases, those aren't very prominent in this book - they're actually more sidenotes when the actual focus is on more regular cases. Which are equally important and interesting, but the blurb is somewhat misleading. All in all, not as good as I expected this to be.