Death Investigators · Corrupt Cops · Pollsters

Those of us who are interested in true crime from the side of the investigation have had a struggle in recent decades. As the understanding that police corruption seems less like a few bad apples and more like a systemic rot, it feels harder and harder to take reporting based mainly on statements from cops at face value. At least for me, there’s always an undertaste of distrust, a whiff of “but who are you, really” that lingers like the smell of pee in a long-vacant house last occupied by cat hoarders. It’s there, I can’t stop smelling it, and it threatens to overpower the whole experience.

That’s why Barbara Butcher’s What The Dead Know (released Tuesday; outlets for purchase listed on Butcher’s site) felt like such a homecoming for me, a way to fall back into those law-and-order-side narratives without worries about brutality, union cover-ups, racist texting scandals, etc etc etc. Butcher, Manhattan’s second-ever female Death Investigator, was an employee at its Medical Examiner’s Office, which while not without its problems can’t hold a candle to other arms of the law. Even before I cracked the spine, I was ready and willing to be on her side for that reason alone.