Coroner: to the Stars by Thomas T. Noguchi, M.D. with Joseph DiMona

The trail-blazing forensic pathologist (on whose career was based the popular TV character Quincy) reveals the full story behind his most fascinating investigations.

"In my memory, as I write, there is a montage of tragic scenes.  The body of the beautiful Marilyn Monroe, her hand outstretched in death toward the telephone by her bed. Robert F. Kennedy, so vibrant and active in life, felled by an assassin's bullet in a hotel kitchen. The grim scene at the secluded estate in Bel-Air where the pregnant Sharon Tate lay brutally massacred. The wastebasket in the hotel room where Janis Joplin met her death. The charred ruins of a little house in Los Angeles where the kidnappers of Patty Hearst perished in a hail of police bullets and a raging fire. The bizarre evidence at the scene of Albert Dekker's 'suicide'. The luxurious - and strangely tidy - apartment in which William Holden was discovered four days after he had died. The red down jacket that Natalie Wood wore when her body was found in the rain-swept waters off Catalina Island. The tiny pinpoints of blood on John Belushi's arm that revealed he had not died of a heart attack."

"I conducted the forensic investigations of each of these cases. But until now I have been unable to tell the full story."

Genres: Nonfiction - True Crime - History - Science - Biography - Memoir - Medical - Death