The Nature of Life and Death: Every Body Leaves a Trace

What is forensic ecology? Wiltshire, one of the founders of this science and the coauthor of two textbooks, answers that question in her gracefully written first book for a general audience. Wiltshire was a botany researcher at University College London when she got a call from Bill Bryden, an officer in Hertfordshire Constabulary. Bryden needed her help in the case of a Chinese Triad murder. The police had the body and the culprits, but they needed to prove the suspects were in the field where the body was dumped. Wiltshire was able to show that maize pollen in the car that transported the body matched the pollen in the field. And so a new career was born, one that involved investigating murders and rapes. “The privet, poplar, elder, damson, goosefoot, nettle, spores of Sphagnum moss, and alien garden plants I did not even have to identify, whispered to us of where she had spent her last lonely hours, and helped in the conviction of the man who killed her,” she says of a later case. Such details as the author’s growing up in Wales, the death of her baby daughter, and the ending of her 42-year marriage provide moving counterpoint to the crime solving. CSI fans will be enthralled. Agent: Will Peterson, Independent Talent Group (U.K.). (Sept.)