Commentaires client les plus utiles
|
|
1 internautes sur 1 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
5.0étoiles sur 5
Awesome! Can't wait for the next novel, Jui 14 2009
Whispers of the Dead is Simon Beckett's third novel featuring forensic pathologist Dr. David Hunter. This book is set in Knoxville, Tennessee and involves what is commonly referred to as 'the body farm'. This is a research facility where cadavers are left to the environment and are studied to understand the effects of decomposition. Dr. Hunter is there as a guest, working with his former mentor, when a mysterious death occurs. Dr. Hunter's mentor is called in by the local law enforcement agency, and he asks Dr. Hunter to assist. From there, the investigation develops and additional dead bodies begin to turn up.
Simon Beckett has quickly become one of my favourite authors. His attention to detail involving the field of forensic anthropology is, to my mind, bang on. He develops characters in such a way that they do not feel one dimensional, but rather take on a life of their own. They literally leap off the page and come to life.
Then there is Dr. David Hunter himself. Flawed. Brilliant. Full of doubts that we all have in one aspect or another of our lives. In short, a well written and developed character.
I enjoyed this book immensely and I look forward so reading the next installment.
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
 
|
|
|
|
|
|
4.0étoiles sur 5
"He's not testing us, he's bragging how clever he is.", Aoû 5 2009
Author Simon Beckett has certainly found a notch for himself, his mystery thrillers cornering the market on the human body's decomposition as his anthropologist hero David Hunter, as David carries out his brutal and often blood-curdling research into death. We meet David only several months after his near-fatal stabbing. Still reeling from the evil machinations of Grace Strachan, David is looking for away to regain his edge and resolve some hard decisions so accepts an invitation from his old colleague and friend Tom Lieberman to attend the Forensic Anthropology Center in Knoxville, better known by another less formal name as the "Body Farm." The Center is a world-renowned center for research into human cadavers, and David hopes to jumpstart his professional drive. Instead, the young anthropologist finds himself caught up in a series of grizzly killings when a call comes through from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation: they've found a body looks like homicide in a mountain cabin. With an invitation from Tom for David to help him do a little field work, David is thrust back into the thick of things. The body's in bad shape, naked, spread-eagled on its back, arms and legs draped over the table edges, maggots dripping from it the floor "like boiled milk," and the combination of heat and stench is overpowering.
The victims limbs had been pulled down on either side of the table and fastened to the wooden pegs with parcel tape, even David couldn't recall ever seeing so many maggots in a single body before. Together with Dan Gardner, Assistant Special Agent in charge and Diane Jacobsen, part of the Field investigations Unit, David realizes that he and Tom are battling a powerful and thoughtful killer who is letting them see he knows about details, the fingerprints left at the crime scene, "He's not testing is, he's bragging how clever he is."
The investigation turns even more bizarre with the discovery of a film canister and a finger print. Yet the originator of the print has been killed in a car crash six months before. This in turn leads to an exhumation of a body at Steeple Hill, a local cemetery, the grisly contents of a casket adding another layer of mystery to the proceedings. This was the first victim, covered in a shroud and buried, then hidden away in shame. While David works on at the morgue, processing the bodies and the unidentified remains in the casket, his presence in the investigation clearly causes friction. Reluctant to back out, his professional instincts are finally kicked back into life when the horror of the situation comes close to him, the life of his best friend is at stake and a killer lurks nearby ready to strike.
Driven by the need to get to the truth behind the victim's fate, David might only be assisting Tom but he feels as though he was a stake in the investigation. Beckett weaves into his nightmarish plot a new and vulnerable David. His backdrop to the action is striking, the forest covered slopes of the Smoky Mountains stretching far into the horizon and the horror of human remains set against a world where the outside has been abruptly cut off, "an eerie sound in a grave yard setting." The author manipulates David and his other characters into southern gothic dance, an Englishman out of place in this world of yokels and cold-blooded killers. Then there's the sudden paper trail of corpses, each one leading to the next. It is here, amid bone and cartilage and mummified skin, and the memories of the sunlit garden of dragonflies and corpses that these nightmarish scenes play out and David finds himself a number one target. While the events unfold in typical formulaic fashion, the action never lets up; it's where the innocent finding themselves prey to terrifying imposter who delights in misdirection as he slips into the lives of one of his victims so easily with the "sloughed skin from their hands." For his part David must rise above his insecurities, pushing personal concerns aside, as Tom, and other members of the taskforce reluctantly propel him to uncover the dark secrets that characterize this new kind of killer. Mike Leonard August 09.
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
de Simon Beckett
de Simon Beckett
de Ann Cleeves
de Tami Hoag
de Peter Robinson
