The dead can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help serve justice using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces. This book draws on crime novelist McDermid's own interviews and firsthand experience on scene with top forensic scientists. Along the way, McDermid discovers...

At 10:30 in the morning on Tuesday, January 9, 1996, I was on a hillside in Rwanda, suddenly doing what I always wanted to do. I took stock of my surroundings as though taking a photograph. I looked up: banana leaves. Down: a human skull. To my left: more banana leaves. I was placing red flags in the dark soil wherever I found human remains. Let's put it this way: I ran out of flags. --From the author--

Investigating a massacre that took place in Guatemala in 1982, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan discovers that those events are linked to the disappearance of four girls from Guatemala City and the murder of a human rights investigator.

Recounts the story of the Dozier School, a Florida reform school shut down in 2011 due to reports of cruelty, abuse, and mysterious deaths, and the efforts of the author, a leading forensic anthropologist, to locate and exhume the graves of the boys buried there in order to reunite them with their families.