W. R. Maples and M. Browning, M. Dead Men do Tell Tales (1994)

     W. R. Maples and M. Browning, M. Dead Men do Tell Tales (1994) A forensic anthropologist’s memoirs. Maples doesn’t acknowledge Browning’s role in the writing, so it’s not clear how they collaborated. Maples begins with a summary of his life, and ends with a plea for more resources for forensic anthropology. In between he tells tales of his more interesting or horrific cases in more or less chronological order. While I believe his claim that he finds it emotionally easy to look at remains, it’s clear from his editorial comments that he can well imagine the agony of the victims whose final moments he can read in their bones.
     He has no pity for murderers (at one point he calls reference to an abused childhood “the latest excuse”). He’s a “Christian”, and like most fundamentalists believes in capital punishment. He also as a justifiable pride in his professional skills, and admires the men who taught him his craft. He helped identify Pizarro’s remains, and the bones of the Tsar’s family excavated from a bog near Ekaterinburg. An ongoing project is the identification of American soldiers’ remains recovered from Vietnam and other places, a task that he says will come to an end as identification of the pitifully small collections of remains becomes impossible. An interesting read, and must reading for any current crime writer, I think. He mentions that licking a suspected bone fragment will differentiate it from rock, something that Peter has also told me. I will be sending this book to him. *** (2003)