An ugly little man, very much in love with his attainment of position and influence within his profession both at home and abroad, Simpson is also very much preoccupied with the perfection of knowledge and analysis in his chosen field of endeavor, forensic science.

This book, written after his retirement from full-time public service at Guy's Hospital and London University (now University College London) includes his recollections, often in great technical detail, of the crimes he was involved with during his years of activity as one of Great Britain's--and the world's--preëminent (I'm thinking about this convention, which I have sometimes permitted myself to adopt since my parents first got me a subscriptions to the New Yorker--but I'm still a little uncomfortable about it) pathologists.

I have some suspicions regarding the exact authorship of the book, that is to say as to whether or not the book was effectively ghosted from transcripts and memoranda of interviews by some unacknowledged but hopefully well-remunerated Grub-worm. If this were so, it would explain two things which I find it hard to reconcile with the character of Simpson as demonstrated in this book:

First, the often overly-conversational style (which makes for good reading, don't get me wrong) suggests the spoken word of a well-schooled public person, though not the typical prose style would would expect to be affected by such an individual with that background; and secondly, there is so much bravura and often not-too-subtle self-congratulation that it seems as if someone has just let him go on a bit too much and then, either out of a sense of fidelity or pique at having to listen to such a person for hours and hours and hours, put it all in pretty much verbatim.

Then again, I could see the first being just a personality quirk born out of long years of what might be called "professional casualness" and a sense of his own greatness putting the man at ease about whatever he had to say, and the second could very likely be put down to either an editor's (lack of?) taste or temerity in the face of an insistent Professor Cedric Keith Simpson, OBE, FCRP, ABCDEFG....

Regardless, the book is a good one, and the stories it contains are intriguing, sometimes horrifying. Simpson was involved in many of the most famous and infamous cases of his day: "the Luton Sack Murder", "Acid Bath" Haigh, the Brothers Kray--he was even called all the way to the "West Indies" (British people are so cute sometimes!) to investigate some of the alleged crimes of the man known as "Michael X".

All these and many more are described--their lurid tabloid titles appended--along with a nice selection of photographs of crime scenes, evidence, tools of death, murderers alleged and convicted, and Simpson in the company of various august personages (including J. Edgard Hoover, fortunately out of drag) to indicate the esteem in which Simpson was held--and not just by himself.

Memoirs of a veteran British crime pathologist--case by case, autopsy by autopsy, rape by rape, murder by murder, bones and blood and pubic hair galore. It's a grisly catalogue, which Simpson delivers with expert, genial directness and occasional macabre glee (""Fun, without disrespect for the dead, is where you look for it""), but only a few of the investigations provide fascination that goes beyond the strictly gruesome. The stand-outs: the ""Acid Bath"" case, with Simpson identifying a murder victim from the gallstone and bone pieces found in the fatty residual sludge; the Trist Case, with Simpson fighting a Portuguese coverup to prove (long-distance) that an English vacation couple died of carbon monoxide, not food-poisoning (""a triumph for English obstinacy""); and Simpson's ground-breaking use of a murderer-rapist's teethmarks on the victim's breast to establish identity. Otherwise, it's the predictable business of determining time of death (in one case from the larval period of the maggots on the body), appraising the angle of knife wounds, matching blood types and hairs, etc. Plus a few lurid asides--""Self-suspension is not always suicide,"" since it may be masochistic sexual fun gone wrong--and full attention to the tactical (but ethical) matter of how-to-testify-in-court as a medical expert...