Death’s Acre is basically a memoir by Dr. Bill Bass, the head of the famous forensic research center, “The Body Farm.” The book, which was co-written by Jon Jefferson, tells us about Bass’ life before becoming a scientist and then later bout his career. He started off the book talking about the Lindbergh case and gave us some background of how he took an anthropology class at the University of Virginia. In the chapter Bare Bones: Forensics 101, Bass was extremely detailed: he told us ho, in order to determine a woman’s age, he looked at her coronal cranial suture, a bone running across the top of her head (pg. 42). Describing various components, such as the suture and the summer heat, Bass said that little things like that can sped up (or slow down) the decaying of bodies.
Bas was very informative, describing the cases he dealt with vividly, painting the reader a picture of corpses or decaying limbs. However, his writing was better than the several pages of black-and-white photos that mainly showed Bass and his family members, not forensic evidence I was expecting to see. I liked that there was a foreword by Patricia Cornwell since we read her book, The Body Farm, before reading Death’s Acre. What I also liked about this book was how Bass told us about some famous, or infamous cases that involved forensics, such as the Lindbergh case that was described in chapter one and talked about his own life in the writing. The Lindberg case was when famous pilot Charles Lindbergh’s son was kidnapped and murdered. Forensic science determined the murderer (although there is still controversy). I was impressed that even seventy years ago forensics played a role in murder cases. All in all, Death’s Acre was an enjoyable read that told me a lot about forensic history.
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