Testimonies of the dead

New York through the eyes of a forensic doctor - a nightmare set in the city of dreams. Billionaires surrounded by works of art or homeless people walking through underground tunnels - their dead bodies tell a unique story each time, the key points of which are hidden in the details. Bruises, tissue fragments, muscle stiffness or blood clots are the alphabet for those who want to learn to read in death. Barbara Butcher worked for twenty-three years in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in New York City. During her career, she has investigated more than 5,500 crime scenes, 680 of which involved homicides. She was investigating a double homicide, horrible suicides, but she's also been involved in major disaster investigations, for example, after 11 September 2001, when she and her colleagues initially relied only on descriptions from family members, to identify the 21,900 remains of the victims. The author, struggling with alcoholism, has made death her surrogate addiction - drawing a map of death in New York City with chilling accuracy. He considers every evidence on the bodies of the deceased as a trace and reconstructs their last moments, which often give the living chills. Butcher writes with brio and candor - like a true New Yorker. It tells the stunning true-life story of a woman who, through working with death every day, learned many lessons about life - and how those lessons saved her from becoming part of the sad statistics herself. They said about the title "Butcher's remarkably honest and sensitive memoir reveals how she learned to navigate the heartbreaking line of work and overcome her own demons. " - Tom Nolan - The Wall Street Journal "Reading this memoir is like watching an episode of CSI with your "dry" best friend. " - NPR "Books We Love"