A brilliant insider’s view of a critical yet vulnerable government agency.
A gripping account of Maryland’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Having spent 10 years as public information officer and executive assistant to the chief medical examiner at the OCME based in Baltimore, former paramedic Goldfarb, author of 18 Tiny Deaths, writes an expert combination of journalism, science, and personal experience. Modern medical examiners specialize in pathology and often hyperspecialize in forensic pathology. Not beholden to the criminal justice system, their sole responsibility is to the deceased. “The relationship between the medical examiner and the deceased is as sacred as any doctor-patient relationship, with the same ethical and legal obligations,” writes the author. Activists regularly accuse police of persuading examiners to fudge their reports (“do us a favor and overlook that broken neck”), but that would be a career-ending move. Forensic autopsies to determine the cause and manner of an unexpected death take place at 74 centers in the U.S., and only 55 are fully accredited. Everywhere else, examinations of varying quality are overseen by a coroner or an appointed or elected official who may not be a doctor. After a compelling history of Baltimore’s elite system, Goldfarb describes its operations, the many disturbing and often gruesome incidents that produce subjects for a forensic autopsy, and the problems of dealing with hostile activists and often uncomprehending media. In the epilogue, the author reveals that the nation’s forensic medical services are on life support. A combination of the massive increase in opioid deaths and stagnant budgets is overwhelming these chronically understaffed agencies. In Baltimore, bodies awaiting autopsy have been piling up in refrigerated trailers, delaying funerals, religious ceremonies, and court cases. With the media and citizenry expressing outrage, morale has plummeted, and many experienced yet overworked staff members have resigned. In 2022, the state appealed to FEMA, which sent pathologists and technicians to temporarily relieve the backlog. Like its sister agencies around the U.S., a shrunken Baltimore OCME continues to do its best.
A brilliant insider’s view of a critical yet vulnerable government agency.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781586423582
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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