All That Remains: A Life in Death

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Her no-nonsense practicality towards death and the human corpse gives the whole book a grounding that lifts it out of some kind of macabre show into a very necessary and frank discussion about what happens when we're dead, whether that be by fair or foul means. Besides, many of us ordinary general readers probably couldn’t handle too much of graphic medical narratives, although she does get into general descriptions of rotting bodies, and of bodies having been torn apart or damaged, and the smells and appearances of a dead body. Part memoir, part science, part meditation on death, her book is compassionate, surprisingly funny, and it will make you think about death in a new light.

Certainly the Indian Ocean Tsunami and the Kosovo chapters show just how determinedly outspoken the author can be although she appears to be listened too increasingly as well. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.Indeed, this unsentimental exploration of “the many faces of death” has at its heart the conviction that we should not fear death but accept it “as an integral and fundamentally necessary part of our life’s process”. While Professor Black tells of tragedy, she also infuses her stories with a wicked sense of humor and much common sense.

It fascinates me and I'm always hungry for more information on this subject, but when push comes to shove, I don't think I could do that kind of work, day in, day out. She uses key cases to reveal how forensic science has developed and what her work has taught her about human nature. I think it was these chapters that effected me the most deeply, as the descriptions of some of the scenes Sue Black is involved with are, simply, horrendous. There’s another surgeon named Henry Gray, from Aberdeen, who was also well-known, though mainly for his wound excision during the First World War, some 50 years after the other one died.

In real life the cases are still unsolved though, as described in the true crime documentary Lovers’ Lane Murders from 2021.