Traces: The Memoir of a Forensic Scientist and Criminal Investigator

by Patricia Wiltshire

No, there is no life after death – but there is always life in death. When you are alive, your body is a mass of beautifully balanced ecosystems, and so it is in death. Your dead body is a rich and vibrant paradise for microbes, a bounty for scavenging insects, birds, rodents, and other animals, some of which will come to your body to feast upon your mortal remains, and some of which will come, like the tinkers and traders exploiting a ‘gold rush’, to prey on the scavengers themselves. And this too is of significance for a forensic ecologist for the way a body is being broken down, the kinds of scavengers that come for it, and at what rate, can itself provide vital pieces to the puzzle of who, what, where, and how.