This book examines the applications of logic and science to decipher chaotic death scenes and difficult cases in an attempt to derive orderly explanations from jumbled clues. Its ten case studies illustrate the powers of observation exercised in reading the signs, identifying them as clues, and reasoning from them to the most feasible explanation for the cause of death. Designed for investigators as well as forensic pathologists, coroners, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, Dead Reckoning: The Art of Forensic Detection stresses the importance of trusting one's own observations even in the face of contradictory evidence.