“I have always valued my lifelessness.”

121. Corrupt Bodies: Death and Dirty Dealing at the Morgue – Peter Everett

Southwark Mortuary sounds like quite the swinging place in the 1980s…and probably before Peter Everett became superintendent. Theft of money, possessions, and organs are all things you don’t want to have to worry about for the deceased, but, they were all present and it seemed like quite the racket. Sketchy bunch of characters working, sketchy police officers involved, yikes.

It takes quite some time for Everett to be able to get a foot into sorting out the corruption, in no small part because there were so many deaths to deal with. A neverending cascade. You’d think that would be expected in a mortuary, but it can be overwhelming when there’s an uptick in crime, an uptick in natural deaths, and Everett also makes connections between the amount of unnatural deaths and crime in relation to the cutbacks made to various services.

This all sounds very dour, but the book is great if you’re okay with reading about mortuaries and crime. It reads very quickly, with smaller stories and interesting issues alongside the general inner workings of a bad renovation, staff situations that run from ridiculous to criminal, and for me, it’s nice to read more about Southwark in modern times, which is just a really interesting part of London. It still has the London hallmark of, oh, you’re renovating? Well you just found what is essentially a mass grave. And others, but that one to me is one of the most intriguing things because in this one, they weren’t dealing with a plague pit, and also, it gives me the impression that the foundation of Poltergeist just happens in London all the time and every young person is at risk of being a Carol Anne.

 

Whatever the need is, Danger Crumples can sort it out. He’s a professional who knows his way around some things.