My Weekly Book

Death’s Acre: Inside the legendary Body Farm - Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson

An interesting read about the career of a prominent American forensic anthropologist, Dr William Bass. But with a somewhat misleading premise. Setting up the famous Body Farm at the University of Tennesee is undoubtedly the author’s most high-profile achievement and the thing that will pull in the readers. It is, after all, the reason I picked up the book myself. But the truth is that this book does not just tell that story. It is, in fact, Dr Bass’ memoirs - and arguably a much more interesting and enlightening read because of that, strongly comparable to Dr Michael Baden’s Dead Reckoning: the science of catching killers that I read towards the end of last year.

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The Body Farm is more properly called the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology Facility - it’s widely known as The Body Farm thanks to Patricia Cornwell who named her fifth Dr Kay Scarpetta novel after it, after hearing the term used as police slang. She also supplies the introduction, which you can read on the official website listed below. Its the place where donated bodies are allowed to decompose under controlled conditions to provide detailed information for scientists and crime scene investigators. Television documentaries have been made - and, from what I’ve seen, it looks like a pretty peaceful way of finding your final rest.

Unsurprisingly the book reveals a man with humour, determination and perseverance - all necessary qualities, I would imagine, in his line of work. It makes the science accessible and Dr Bass is never afraid to laugh at himself - most notably in the famous Colonel Shy case, when he managed to wrongly estimate the time of death of a Civil War veteran by 113 years - due to extraordinarily unusual circumstances, it must be said.

It was the embarrassment of this case, plus finding a way to shut up smart-ass defence attorneys for the next 30 years, that led to the Body Farm’s creation. Other fascinating cases mentioned here include a complex fire-related insurance scam that *nearly* worked and a crematorium that was taking, shall we say, a slightly slipshod approach to its duties. An interesting read that touches on some of the big philosophical questions of life and death - but not necessarily exactly what you expect when you pick it up off the shelf. No worse for that, however.

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Half way, hurrah.

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Some links:

• The book’s website - packed with extras and detailed information
• The Forensic Anthropology Centre, University of Tennessee at Knoxville
• Wikipedia: Body farm
• Wikipedia: The Body Farm (Patricia Cornwell novel)
• Crime Library: profile of Bill Bass and the Body Farm
• CNN: Pastoral putrefaction down on the Body Farm
• Wired: Spoiled rotten at The Body Farm (article about a similar facility in Iowa)
• The Age (AU): Dead people do tell tales

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 1:19 pm and is filed under 2007 reading challenge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.