Review: "Autopsy" by Ryan Blumenthal

 

Autopsy by Ryan Blumenthal
Published August 2020 via Jonathan Ball
★★★

For reasons that I can't quite explain, forensic pathology memoirs and coroners' memoirs and so on are lodged in my brain in the same category as celebrity memoirs: something to cleanse the palate between more difficult reads. (Don't worry, that sounds strange to me too.) Blumenthal's book caught my eye because of the setting: the vast majority of the forensic pathology (etc.) memoirs that I've read have been by people working in American or UK settings, and South Africa presents a very different context: different climate, different politics, different resources. Blumenthal mentions any number of these differences—North America, for example, rarely sees cases in which people are trapped inside a car tire and burned alive, and I can't think of a UK context in which you would say Often, a taxi boss will hire youngsters to kill the competition (112).

Unfortunately there is very little story here. Blumenthal goes in big on anecdotes, summing up what must have been dramatic cases in a few sentences:

In another case involving an elephant, a guide sustained multiple directed blunt force injuries when he was attacked. He survived for a few weeks, but died in hospital. I was consulted forensically about this case. (59)

Of the six honey-bee-related deaths I have come across so far, one case involved a member of the clergy who sustained a single bee sting to his forehead. He died due to coronary artery plaque rupture, which led to a heart attack. Another case involved... (61)

I once had to do an autopsy on a body that had gone through a wood chipper. Needless to say, this kind of case can be very difficult and time-consuming. (145)

Anecdotes are all very good and well, but I strongly would have preferred, say, one in-depth case per chapter, with a few anecdotes sprinkled in for good measure. Instead I'm left with the sense that Blumenthal has seen so many cases throughout his career that he's lost sense of which make for the most compelling stories. (Oh, and I come away with knowledge of the Lindy Effect, which is a concept I'm familiar with but didn't know had a name.)

Just for fun:

The deceased was a known recreational drug user, who had used heroine cut with talcum powder. When he had injected the heroine into a vein... (80)

The magic pill was cocaine or an amphetamine, or maybe even heroine, which is highly addictive. (112)

Ah, yes, the dangers of heroine...