Whispers of the Dead

It is at the National Forensic Academy in Tennessee that we find David Hunter in “Whispers of the Dead”. With the murderer of Runa still at large, David decides to escape London and the violence that almost killed him. Having come this close to his own death, he returns to the “Body Farm” to find out whether he can still continue working with death in its most gruesome forms. He accepts working, together with his former mentor at the Body Farm, on a murder investigation.

The victim’s body, discovered bound and tortured in a hut in the forest, is in a state of decomposition far more advanced than it should be. With fingerprints abundant at the crime scene, it seems easy to find the murderer, until the police realise they belong to a man who has died six months ago. Examining the bodies found in the course of the investigation, David gathers one clue after another, which bring him ever closer to identifying the criminal. Little does he know, that he might be closer to the murderer than he would want to be. 

“The largest human organ, it is also the most overlooked. Accounting for an eighth of the entire body mass, on an average adult it covers an area of approximately two square metres. Structurally skin is a work of art, a nest of capillaries, glands and nerves that both regulates and protects. It is our sensory interface with the outside world, the barrier at which our individuality - our self - ends. … But, even dead and discarded, skin still retains traces of its former self. Even now it can still have a story to tell, and secrets to keep. Provided you know how to look.”

Whispers of the Dead.Bantam Books. 477 pages. First published in 2009.