Antonio Garrido Creates Historical Novel of Significance, Including Background, and Thriller With Leading Character Song Ci, Father of Forensics!

The Corpse Reader

By Antonio Garrido
Translated by Tom Bunstead



Recipient of the 2012 Zaragoza International Prize for best historical novel published in Spain


Out on the 28th of May; Pre-order now!!!



When a novel receives such an award, it is quite easily for any reviewer to exlaim that it is outstanding! And that is very true...

Buttt, naturally, for me, when I saw the author's name and learned he was from Spain, I automatically went to the back of the book!

Yes, there it was, a complete bibliography, as well as a glossary! Then I checked out his credentials--a former educator and industrial engineer... Further, he has spent years of research into the Tsong dynasty, as well as the five-column treatise on forensics written by Song Ci, who is now commonly known as The Father of Forensics Medicine...

Now, why did that come first for me? Well, because this book was written by someone outside of China. To me that automatically meant he had to have considerable evidence of research to have acquired the knowledge to write such an epic historical novel on the life of Song Ci, don't you think?
And Antonio Garrido certain has done that. Interestingly, he had little knowledge of forensics...

Wow! Don't we Americans think we all know so much, given our variety and interest in television programs, such as CSI, Bones, etc., but when we read a novel based upon a master of this science, we will quickly learn that we really know so very little!

"Ci had some doubts about Gray
Fox's inspection, and Ci was ready
to see if he was right.
"He went first to the corpse's nape,
working his fingers from there up
along the scalp to the crown of the
head, and then inspecting the ears
with the help of the little spatula.
Then he went downward from the
next, examining the muscular
shoulders, upper arms, elbows, and
forearms, stopping at the right hand
and paying particular attention at the
base of the thumb...
"Your student has carried out a
superficial examination. Blinded
by his ego, he ignored the value of
what seemed to him banal facts.
Just as a race over a thousand li
can only be achieved one step at a
time, examining a corpse requires
patience and attention to the most
minute details..."
~~~

The first half of the novel surrounds Ci's childhood and reminded me of the famous Prodigal Son's story, except that Ci was attending college, while his older brother farmed their land. But when his father lost his job, Ci had to come back and did most of his work, while his brother took much more time off. 

A number of important characters are introduced in this part, including a judge for whom his father worked and who did much to ensure that Ci was taking the proper classes and other support he needed to be able to sit for a future position.

Even then, while he took classes, however, his brilliance placed him as somewhat of an outsider, especially, with a student who had high connections, but did not have the "eyes" to see what Ci did when he evaluated bodies.

But then a neighbor, Shang, was murdered and Ci first found the body as he worked in the fields, and then was brought in to review his body. Ci's brother was blamed for his murder, but his rival made sure that word got around that Ci should not be trusted...


Ci was also foolish in later becoming involved with a local gambler who wanted to take advantage of his expertise and entice rich customers to the local cemetery, to have Ci examine the body and define how the individual died. It was at that time that Ci began to be called "The Corpse Reader..." It's hard to blame him, however, since his father and mother as well as his brother in jail, leaving Ci with his ill sister...

At this point, the drama, suspense, and investigation moves into high gear as Ci tries to find evidence to save his brother. He met  with corrupt officials, told he would have to pay to gain support for his brother. In desperation, he manages to get further into trouble to make money...and then having to quickly leave town! As he left, he visited the cell where his brother was and saw the results of his torture and knew he was dead. They had lied to him, even as they took the money!

In The Washing Away of Wrongs, the first documented forensic entomology case is reported. In 1235 A.D., a stabbing occurred in a Chinese village. By testing different blades on an animal carcass, it was determined that the wound was caused by a sickle. After further questioning, the investigator had all villagers bring their sickles and lay them out before the crowd. Blow flies were attracted to a single sickle because invisible remnants of blood and tissue still adhered to it. The owner of the alleged sickle later broke down and confessed the crime.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collected_Cases_of_Injustice_Rectified

Interestingly, this case which comes from the works of Song Ci, is used in several ways during the mystery thriller. Cool use of actual research, right?!

"1206, Tsong dynasty, Eastern China.

Fujian Circuit.

Jianyang Subprefecture farmlands.

"Shang didn't know death was coming for him until he tasted the blood spurting up into his throat. He covered the wound with his hands to try to stem the bleeding. He tried to speak, too, but before he could make a sound, his eyes opened wide and his legs crumpled beneath him like a worn-out marionette's. If he could have uttered the words, he would have spoken his killer's name, but the blood in his throat, along with the cloth the killer had stuffed into his mouth, prevented him.

"On his knees in the mud, before breathing his last breath, Shang felt the warm rain and smelled the wet earth beneath him. Both had been with him his whole life. Then, soaked in blood, Shang's body collapsed into the mire, and his soul drifted away..."

~~~

Test: What is the most important word in the above paragraph for solving this mystery?

This novel is exceptional in so many different ways... If you are into forensic sciences, this is a must read... History buffs...also a must-read! For those who enjoy a good forensic science suspense thriller, this will easily fulfill your interests. Highly Recommended!

GABixlerReviews

A native of Spain, a former educator, and industrial engineer, Antonio Garrido has received acclaim for the darkly compelling storytelling and nuanced historical details that shape his novel The Corpse Reader. This fictionalized account of the early life of Song Cí, the Chinese founding father of forensic science, represents the author's years of research into cultural, social, legal, and political aspects of life in the Tsong Dynasty, as well as his extensive study of Song Cí's own five-volume treatise on forensics. In 2012, The Corpse Reader received the Zaragoza International Prize for best historical novel published in Spain (Premio Internacional de Novela Histórica Ciudad de Zaragoza). Antonio's previous novel, La Escriba, was published in 2008. Garrido currently resides in Valencia, Spain.

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• Read an Exclusive Excerpt from Antonio Garrido's The Corpse Reader

P. C. Zick Presents Fascinating Family Drama While Highlighting Environmental Issues!

A beach after an oil spill. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
"News reports on Deepwater Horizon--early May
"Wildlife experts and volunteers continued to prepare for the worst as April
gave way to May. Uncertainty in the movement of the Gulf Stream caused
emergency operations to open in Tampa and Miami with an eye on the North Carolina coast as a possible area where the slick might move if the
winds continued. As the wildlife struggled, another uncertainty loomed.
Hurricane season started June 1 and lasted for six months. Questions
swirled about "what if?"
"By the first week of May, two weeks after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, dead sea turtles began washing up on the beaches near Pass
Christian, Mississippi. Beach walkers discovered the stranded animals on
sand darkened by the blood seeping from the turtles' nostrils and
underbelly.
"The Sea Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Mississippi, opened a special lab-
oratory to hold twenty-three loggerhead, leatherback, and Kemp's Ridley
carcasses awaiting necropsies..."
~~~

Trails in the Sand

By P. C. Zick



Zick's latest novel is totally different than my earlier read--Live From the Road--Click over to my review if you haven't read it yet. I loved that one, but her latest is more serious, more "today's headlines" and more drama that shares a contemporary love story like no other I've read... It is a novel that covers three generations and shows the dark side of things learned through and from our ancestors. An important book in several ways.

The main character, Caroline Carlisle is an environmental writer. She also has a marine biologist degree which has served to ensure her acceptance and respect from those with whom she works. Zick chose to use turtles as the focus of her story, tying it into the family background; however, the news coverage could have been related to all ocean life affected...

By oil spills...

“Everything’s going to work out,” Gladdy said. “You’ll see. Daddy will forget all about it once he goes back to work on Monday.”

“He’s not going to forget, Gladdy. Not this,” Alex said. “And neither will I. Do you think you can forget it ever happened?”

“I can try. You can try. Let’s just put it out of our minds as if it never happened. Please, Alex. We have to.”

“It won’t work. It’s hopeless,” Alex said.

“Look,” Gladdy poked her brother who was older by ten months.

She pointed to the edge of the shoreline only feet away from where they sat on the sand. The light from the rising moon illuminated the beach in a soft white bath.

“It’s a loggerhead,” Alex said as a sea turtle lumbered out of the ocean and laboriously began its march to the dune line. “You can tell by its big head.”

“I bet it’s going to lay eggs,” Gladdy whispered.

They sat motionless as the turtle, not more than fifty feet away, pulled itself through the sand. The loggerhead moved slowly but steadily, using first the front right and then the left rear flippers to pull it forward. Then it repeated the action with the other diagonal flippers. Its march from the sea was distinct from the other species of turtles that came ashore in Florida to lay eggs. The green turtle, Kemp’s ridley, the leatherback, and the hawksbill also laid their eggs on the beaches of the peninsula, but loggerheads were by far the most numerous.

The female loggerhead, so graceful as it floated and swam in the ocean, now tromped through the sand dragging nearly 300 pounds of body weight. Every few minutes, it would stop and dig its snout into the sand.

“She’s testing the temperature,” Alex said. “That’s exactly how it was described in that book Daddy threw in the trash tonight.”

Alex read any book he could find about the ocean. Archie Carr just published a book about the sea turtles, and Alex checked the book out of the library in Calico, where the Stokleys lived, before they came to St. George Island for the summer. He’d received special permission to keep it for three months. When his father came to the dinner table that night and saw Alex sitting with his elbows on the table and The Windward Road propped up on his glass of milk, Arthur Stokley snatched the book and walked out through the kitchen to the back porch and threw it in the trash.

“We do not read at the table,” Dr. Stokley said when he returned. “You have the manners of a heathen and the sense of a moron. You never fail to disappoint me...”

“I’m up to 82,” Gladdy said. “There’s 83 and 84.”

After counting 124 eggs, they watched as the sea turtle filled in the cavity with its rear flippers and then swept the area in an effort to disguise what lay beneath the surface.

When the turtle finished her job, nearly two hours after she came from the sea, she began the slow return back to the ocean. Alex rose from the sand and followed the loggerhead.

“Alex, what are you doing? You can’t go swimming after dark – the undertow is too strong.”

“Did you know sea turtles always return to lay their eggs on the beach where they were hatched?” Alex said as he walked backwards into the sea following the trail of the female loggerhead. “The eggs will hatch in about two months, Gladdy. Be sure to come down here every night and wait for them to emerge so you can help them go home. Remember 124 eggs and remember the location.”

Alex turned toward the ocean and kept walking until the sea engulfed him, and he went under.

“Alex, come back,” Gladdy yelled out over the surf, but the only answer came from the sound of the waves lapping the beach. “We’ll find a way.”

Gladdy pulled the corners of the tablecloth up around her shoulders and waited for her brother to reappear. The waves came back to shore time after time, but as she sat transfixed in her spot on the beach, Alex never returned with them. ~~~

Readers will learn about not only the oil spill disaster but a coal mine disaster in West Virginia... Moving back and forth between the disasters to the family life affected by each of those disasters presents an extremely engaging interplay between the news that many of us just hear about, to those lives that are involved. This adds much greater depth to Zick's book in my opinion.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caretta_caretta_060417w2.jpg

The Prologue begins in 1956 within Caroline's mother's life. She and her brother had been close, having the same interests and love for being out of doors. Alex loved the sea and they had gone out to sit one night when a loggerhead had crawled on shore to lay her eggs. Some internal instinct led them back to the shores where they were born as well... (This later plays a major role in the oil spill damage control)

That night when the loggerhead had finished and went back into the ocean, Alex had followed and followed her into the sea.

Gladdy had sat there watching, waiting for him to come back--until she realized he wasn't coming.. .

It was after that that Gladdy changed and when she married and had two children, she chose to ignore Caroline and Caroline had always wondered why... Caroline and her sister had never really gotten along either, especially with her mother constantly pitting the two against each other. Fortunately, Caroline had her father to support her as much as possible, but sometimes what he said was just as confusing, because he would never explain why he was willing to defend her mother.

Now, Caroline is married to Simon, her childhood friend, with whom she'd been in love since they met as children. But this is her third marriage and Simon's second... And Simon's first wife had been Caroline's sister... A little complicated? You don't know the half of it, as they say... Because.when her mother dies, Caroline finds journals that her mother had kept to herself--from her grandfather, from Alex and from Gladdy.

The truth is slowly coming out, but is it too late? Sometimes families keep secrets, thinking it will protect the family name and the individuals. But when those secrets have changed the lives of those involved? Can finding out the truth ever make it right again?

Zick has done an excellent job spotlighting the safety issues caused, normally, by the "bottom-line emphasis" routinely chosen by corporations. At the same time, she has created a set of characters that come alive, as if you are right there in the midst of the family discussions, or should I say arguments? Can love make it through when family members totally opposes the love between two people? Zick has certainly made the love between her two main characters strong enough. But...

This family tree has so many limbs that there is no way to follow unless you're reading the novel. I highly advise that you do. The drama is superb--intense, unbelievable in ways you least would expect and surprising in how much you may see issues that have occurred in your own family. Highly recommended!

GABixlerReviews

About the Author
P.C. Zick’s career as a writer began in 1998 with the publication of her first column in a local paper. By day, she was a high school English teacher, but at night and on vacations, she began writing novels and working as a freelance journalist. By 2001, she left teaching and began pursuing a full-time gig as a writer. She describes herself as a "storyteller" no matter the genre. Currently, she writes two blogs. Trails in the Sand is her fifth novel and the second one self-published. She published Live from the Road in May 2012. Her blog and her novels contain the elements most dear to her heart, ranging from love to the environment. She believes in living lightly upon this earth with love, laughter, and passion. She resides in Pennsylvania with her husband Robert.

An important song used in novel...provided for your enjoyment.

Review: Daughter Shares Memoir of A Broken Family

Image via Wikipedia

"Channa will evade Nazi soldiers and survive WWII by the age of 12"

Broken Birds:

The Story of My Momila

By Jeannette Katzir




In many ways Broken Birds is a sad, but wonderfully detailed historical documentary of some of those events that took place during World War II and, in particular, what we know as The Holocaust. It is the story of a young girl and boy who narrowly escaped death and who later married. Each story is presented separately. Channa Poltzer is Momila; Nathan her husband. Jeannette Katzir, on of their daughters is the author. But it is a story of family--a family that, today, right now, continues to be affected in small and large ways by what happened so many years ago.

Or is it?

For those of us who are children of that war, there are many who can share familial "results" from their parents living during the war. How much more, then, can the effect of those who were actually there during that war be upon the children of those children?


When I was young and, for some reason, asked about our heritage (German on both sides), I can remember that my mother would respond in only one way--we are Americans.

And when Jeannette, her Father, and other siblings traveled to Germany, they often heard from those who lived there that the places they were asking directions to--for instance, the death camp--did not exist.

It is Shame that brings those answers...shame at what was done to men, women and children there in those camps... Readers cannot help but feel this shame, once again, as Katzir shares the story of her parents. Both children bravely faced what they had to do and, in the end, escaped to a better life. Praise God for that.

At the same time, Katzar's family story, of broken birds, may very well be illustrative to the families of many in America, who are members of dysfunctional families. I say this not to detract from the hardships and very real and open account of Katzir's memoir, but to strengthen its universality to the larger American families who have been affected by their past. Unfortunately, by revealing the jealousy, greed, and selfishness in such detail that occurred upon the death of Channa, the drama among the remaining family to a great extent overpowers the parents' story.
 
Were the actions taken by the children of the Poltzer family due to the lives of their parents? Or are they typical of children in America who are greedy and the desire for money and an easy life is expected rather than earned? Mainly my reaction was that the two stories should never have been merged. I respect greatly what was researched and documented for Channa and Nathan. However, in my opinion, Sibling rivalry that requires money to reflect parents' love is not a new story.

Perhaps Honor Thy Mother and Father was the story I was expecting for those who made it through the Holocaust... Still, there is much to read in Broken Birds. Channa and Nathan's stories are indeed worth reading. And if you wish to find a book opening discussing what happens in families about money, upon the deaths of other family members, well, I have many stories of my own and other families I have known and didn't really find much different to offer here. I wish I could say that this was a memorable book. It was not. Please read other reviews on this book so that you may decide for yourself. Perhaps the sibing rivalry many of us have faced was too dominant for this reviewer.

Book Received
From Author

G. A. Bixler