Unnatural Causes - Richard Shepherd

I am a fan of the medical memoir genre, and this one is from one of those specialties that is endlessly fascinating. Richard Shepherd is a Forensic Pathologist who does post mortems and is often seen on the television where he reviews celebrity causes of death. We learn in this book about the senior men he trained under, the grueling hours of study and hard work it takes to qualify in this field, and the personal toll it takes on him and his family over the years.

I enjoyed all the information that he shared about the many cases he has been involved in, and he mainly focuses on the high profile ones, the Marchioness Accident, the Clapham Rail Disaster and 9/11. It is totally done with the correct level of respect and balance between informing us without disrespecting the victims or their families. 

I did come away from reading this with a lot of respect for him and wishing I had got to meet him when I worked at St Georges in Tooting at the same time period. A lot of the book is devoted to his family, who had to put up with mainly his absence due to getting called back to work, and you have to admire his honesty in discussing the problems in his marriage and his struggles with mental health.

I could quite happily carried on reading another 400 pages of this book.  4/5