Risking Life for Death: Lessons for the Living from the Autopsy Table by Ryan Blumenthal
Reviewed by: Nicole Engelbrecht
Professor Ryan Blumenthal is not your garden variety Joe Public. If you spend any amount of time with the man, it soon becomes evident that his multiple academic achievements and bestselling author status contribute only partially to that fact. Blumenthal just thinks differently. He listens and responds, but the gears in his mind are constantly turning at a breakneck speed. His eyes take in small details that simply fade into the background for most of us, and one gets the distinct feeling he’s weighing up the risk inherent in every moment. He’d likely have been an incredible detective, and in a way, that’s exactly what he became.
The Professor has often alluded to forensic pathology being detective work for the dead. His crime scene is the human body. His clues are the slightly discoloured tissue, or the residue left inside a single nostril. In his first book, Autopsy: Life in the Trenches with a Forensic Pathologist in Africa, which reached bestseller status and was published internationally, he delves deeply into his profession and everything the eager public might want to know about it. His latest literary offering, Risking Life For Death, is, like its author, different.
Fans of the true crime genre are definitely catered to in the book with carefully selected case studies throughout which focus on a wide variety of causes of death and injury, but as Ryan suggested in my interview with him on Jonathan Ball Publishers’ Pagecast podcast, the book really is a mix of genres. Again, in keeping with its creator’s own manner of existing in the world, it’s difficult to put in a box and slap a label on, and perhaps therein lies its greatest value.
The spinal cord against which Risking Life For Death rests is Locard’s Exchange Principle, which can be summarised as ‘every contact leaves a trace’. The case studies included certainly demonstrate this principle, but it goes further than that. Throughout his pathology career, Blumenthal has begun to piece together the lessons that the dead have to offer the living, and it is this idea that makes this book different from many nonfiction books I’ve read recently.
While most epilogues are ‘nice-to-haves’ and maybe tie up a few loose threads, this epilogue is the key to truly absorbing the book’s message. It’s a summary of the lessons each person Blumenthal has autopsied has left with him, how that contact with them left traces in his life, and how those can be passed on to the reader too. Risking Life For Death is not a page-a-day time-passer book. It is a devour-in-chunks book, and then one you’ll undoubtedly find yourself reading a second time just because you can and should.
Risking Life For Death: Lessons for the Living from the Autopsy Table, is published in South Africa by Jonathan Ball Publishers. It is available for purchase in all good bookstores and online as an eBook.
