There is no scientist in the world like Dr. Bill Bass. A pioneer in forensic anthropology, Bass created the world’s first laboratory dedicated to the study of human decomposition—three acres of land on a hillside in Tennessee where human bodies are left to the elements. His research at “the Body Farm” has revolutionized forensic science, helping police crack cold cases and pinpoint time of death. But during a forensics career that spans half a century, Bass and his work have ranged far beyond the gates of the Body Farm. In this riveting book, the bone sleuth explores the rise of modern forensic science, using fascinating cases from his career to take readers into the real world of C.S.I.

I need to admit that I wanted to read this book for a while now, because I was always interested in how forensic stuff is used to catch killers and how the forensic team can tell how long ago the person died. But in way this book didn’t live up to the hype I had for it. But I’m gonna discuss everything about this book in this review, so if you are interested then keep reading. 

First of all, this book talks a lot about the career of Bill Bass, which I found myself to not be interested in so much. Especially those parts which didn’t involve the creation and running of the body farm. Since I never was a fan of Bill Bass personally, I only was interested in his work at the body farm. 

At times this book feels like reading a medical textbook because of all the medical terms this book uses and those medical terms used in this book made me feel like an idiot because I had absolutely no idea what they meant so I needed to google them to get an idea of what those fancy medical words meant.

The writing style in this book feels very much like a textbook at times because of all the difficult medical terms this book uses. In my opinion this book would have been much better if it used like a simple everyday language for readers as myself who have absolutely no understanding of medical terminology and practices besides going to the GP every 2 or 3 years.

But I really liked the fact that this book talks about the rise of modern forensic science which I found to be very interesting and fun to read about. 

I also liked a lot the fact that this book talks about how the forensic teams are able to say the time of dead and what the person died from solely based from the dead body. I found it to be very interesting and it solved a lot of the questions I had about how the forensic science now on days work and how much we as humans have learned about bodies and death.

This book also talks about some cases which Bill Bass have worked on, where he needed to work on dead bodies to find out the cause of death. Which really helps us understand how the modern day forensic science works in practices and not only in theory. 

We get a lot of details and fun facts in this book about the forensic science, which at times feels like reading a medical textbook because of how this book tells us the details and those “fun facts”.

But if you are interested in true crime and how the forensic science works like I am, then I think you will learn a lot from reading this book even thou it tends to be pretty heavy at times. 

I Give This Book 3 / 5