Special Reports

Pinpointing time of death is exceedingly difficult - certainly a lot harder than it looks in all those blood thirsty novels and TV dramas. Jessica Snyder Sachs takes a refreshingly realistic approach to the subject in Corpse (Perseus, $15). She won acclaim from our reviewer, Bernard Knight, emeritus professor of forensic pathology at the University of Wales.

Death, acknowledges Sachs, is a complicated process. She looks at the methods entomologists use to estimate time of death: for example, tracing the life cycles of corpse flies and obscure beetles that seize on dead bodies as richly furnished homes for their larvae.