Unnatural Death

Kriminalroman om en gammel dame, der pludselig dør tilsyneladende af helt naturlige årsager. Hendes læge er ikke tilfreds og beder Peter Wimsey om at undersøge omstændighederne ved hendes død

* JFK's autopsy failed to disclose crucial evidence. * The deaths of John Belushi and Elvis Presley were far more complex than anyone has let on. * Decisive medical findings in the von Bulow affair were consistently overlooked. These are but three of the shocking revelations in Dr. Michael Baden's first-person, no-holds-barred account of his distinguished career in forensic pathology. In determining the causes of tens of thousands of deaths, from those of presidents and rock stars to victims of serial killings, exotic sex rituals, mass disasters, child abuse and drug abuse, Baden has come to the unavoidable conclusion that the search for scientific truth is often sullied by the pressures of expediency. He produces dramatic evidence to demonstrate that political intrigue, influence peddling, and professional incompetence have created a national crisis in forensic medicine. "A fascinating look into the mechanics of forensics and a disconcerting lesson in the politics of death." -- The New York Times Book Review

Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers - Unnatural Death is a 1927 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her third featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. It was published under the title The Dawson Pedigree in the United States in 1928. Plot: Lord Peter Wimsey and his friend Chief Inspector Parker are told about the death, in late 1925, of an elderly woman named Agatha Dawson who had been suffering from terminal cancer. She was being cared for by Mary Whittaker, her great-niece and a trained nurse. Miss Dawson had an extreme aversion to making a will, believing that Miss Whittaker, her only known relative, would naturally inherit everything. Wimsey is intrigued in spite of the fact that there is no evidence of any crime (a post-mortem found no sign of foul play), nor any apparent motive (on Miss Dawson's death her estate did indeed pass, as she had expected and wished, to her great-niece). Wimsey sends his private investigator, Miss Katharine Climpson, to the village of Leahampton to investigate. She discovers that shortly before her death Miss Dawson had dismissed her maids, the sisters Bertha and Evelyn Gotobed. Wimsey places advertisements in the press asking them to get in touch. A few days later, Bertha is found dead in Epping Forest. On the body is a £5 banknote, originally issued to a Mrs Muriel Forrest who lives in an elegant flat in South Audley Street, Mayfair. Wimsey and Parker visit her. She claims not to remember the banknote, but thinks she may have put it on a horse. Wimsey tricks her into providing her fingerprints on a wineglass. In a drawer he finds a hypodermic syringe with a doctor's prescription "to be injected when the pain is very severe". Evelyn Gotobed tells Wimsey of an episode shortly before the sisters were dismissed in which Miss Whittaker had tried to get them to witness Miss Dawson's will, without the latter's knowledge. A mysterious West Indian clergyman named Hallelujah Dawson had also turned up, claiming to be an impecunious distant relative.

Unnatural Death, published in 1927, is the third novel written by Dorothy L. Sayers featuring her aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey. The story begins with a conversation in a restaurant between Wimsey, his friend Detective Inspector Charles Parker, and a doctor who tells them about a situation he was involved in: an elderly lady, suffering from a slow-acting cancer, died suddenly and unexpectedly with no obvious immediate cause of death. She died intestate, but her great-niece, with whom she was living, was set to inherit the considerable estate. Suspecting something wrong, the doctor demanded an autopsy, which showed nothing unusual, but stirred up such local animosity that the he was forced to abandon his practice. Wimsey, sensing a mystery, decides to investigate—but his investigation triggers a series of deadly events. One of the delights of the book is the introduction of a new character in Miss Alexandra Climpson, a middle-aged spinster whom Wimsey employs as an investigative agent, and whose effusive reports of the gossip she picks up in the town are very amusing. Unnatural Death is notable for its inclusion of one clearly lesbian character—a decision unusual in detective fiction at the time—and the very sympathetic treatment by Wimsey of a black character (though offensively racist terms for him are used by others in the book). An adaptation of the book was made for BBC radio in 1975.

Frank May practices law, but he gets by just doing the safe, bland kindwriting wills, forming partnerships, processing papers. Everything far from the seedy adventures of criminal law or detective work. But every lawyer knows: clients have a habit of taking you to places you don't want to be. One of those clients is the estate of the late Harriet Wingate. Harriet had money, and that always makes for interested relatives. But a bizarre husband Harriet's junior, by a half-century? Two squabbling nieces? The suddenly revealed grandson? Worst of all, a litter of soon-to-be rich cats? Frank did not think she even had a cat. Frank wrote Harriet's will, or so he thought. But more wills than he ever imagined keep popping up, including the notorious "cat will" and a torn, handwritten mystery will. Actually, they're all a mystery, just like Harriet's death. The wills and the relatives, if not the cats, drag Frank into the world he had so carefully avoided in his practice. Now to probate the estate and resolve the conflicting wills, he may have to unravel a mystery or two. And even a second unnatural death. To do all that, he will have to use his headand step far outside his comfort zone. A QP Mystery, fourth in the series of the Frank May Chronicles.

The Functions of Unnatural Death in Stephen King: Murder, Sickness, and Plots examines the function of death in over thirty of King’s works to parse out the ways the Master of Horror plays with the idea of death and approaches it from multiple angles.

Sir Lawrence Linwood is dead. More accurately, he was murdered—savagely beaten to death in his own study with a mediaeval mace. The murder calls home his three adopted children: Alan, an archeologist; Roger, an engineer; and Caroline, a journalist. But his heirs soon find that his last testament contains a strange proviso—that his estate shall go to the heir who solves his murder. To secure their future, each Linwood heir must now dig into the past. As their suspicion mounts—of each other and of peculiar strangers in the churchless town of Linwood Hollow—they come to suspect that the perpetrator lurks in the mysterious origins of their own birth.

The chilling tome that launched an entire genre of books about the often gruesome but always tragic ways people have died in our national parks, this updated edition of the classic includes calamities in Yellowstone from the past sixteen years, including the infamous grizzly bear attacks in the summer of 2011 as well as a fatal hot springs accident in 2000. In these accounts, written with sensitivity as cautionary tales about what to do and what not to do in one of our wildest national parks, Whittlesey recounts deaths ranging from tragedy to folly—from being caught in a freak avalanche to the goring of a photographer who just got a little too close to a bison. Armchair travelers and park visitors alike will be fascinated by this important book detailing the dangers awaiting in our first national park.