Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson Beyond the Body Farm

Beyond the Body Farm

Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson

Morrow, Sep 2007, $25.95

ISBN: 9780060875299

With two body farm novels (see FLESH AND BONE and CARVED IN BONE) and an account of his forensic anthropological work (see DEATH'S ACRE), Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson provide a sort of autobiographical account of the former's work in Kansas and more so in Tennessee where he created the first "living" forensic research lab. Dr. Bass gives credit to his instructor five decades ago Dr. Krogman, known as the "Bone Detective" who got him interested in the unnamed at that time field of forensic anthropology. He also credits Patricia Cornwell with her novel THE BODY FARM for making him famous and his type of work acceptable amidst the public; without Ms. Cornwell there is no CSI on TV. However, the fascinating segments of the book are the cases over the last fifty years that run the gamut from the Big Bopper to the wrongly identified corpse to a fireworks factory explosion to ancient Persia to solving modern day cases for local police departments. It is these cases and how he and his team solved them by shaking and tossing of the bones that makes for a fine CSI read with Harry Houdini appearing as a star performer in a future exhumation.

Harriet Klausner