What the Dead Know

BOOK REVIEW
What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator
by Barbara Butcher 2023

About the Author
Barbara Butcher spent 23 years at the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner as a death investigator, director of the Forensic Sciences Training Program, and chief of staff. There she investigated more than 5500 deaths, 680 of them homicides. She worked mass disasters including 9/11, the 2004 tsunami, the London Underground bombing, and the crash of Flight 587.

About the Book
“A propulsive memoir; equal parts stories of how one lives and dies in NYC and Butcher’s personal journey of self-discovery and recovery, coming to know, trust herself. Deftly well crafted, What The Dead Know tells a powerful story of what it is to be human, ever curious, and compelled to bear witness to the world around us.” — A.M. Homes, author of The Unfolding

“In this riveting memoir, Barbara Butcher writes unflinchingly about death and loss with stories gleaned from decades of experience in the New York City Medical Examiner’s Offices, but she also writes honestly and with surprising humor about her own life’s challenges and recoveries. Reading this book felt like getting to know a new, fascinating friend.” — Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author of Find Me

“Barbara Butcher’s What the Dead Know is three unputdownable books in one—a series of gripping true crime stories told with unflinching style, a revealing and fascinating look at crime scene investigation, and an engrossing, moving, and very funny memoir that will inspire everyone who reads it.” — Kate White, New York Times bestselling author of The Second Husband

A riveting, deeply personal memoir of more than twenty years of death-scene investigations by New York City death investigator Barbara Butcher.

Barbara Butcher was the second woman ever hired for the role of Death Investigator in Manhattan, she was the first to last more than three months. The work was gritty, demanding, morbid, and sometimes dangerous – she loved it.

Butcher (yes, that is her real name, and she has heard all the jokes) spent day in and day out investigating double homicides, gruesome suicides, and most heartbreaking of all, underage rape victims who had also been murdered. In What the Dead Know, she writes with the kind of New York attitude and bravado you might expect from decades in the field, investigating more than 5,500 death scenes, 680 of which were homicides. In the opening chapter, she describes how just from sheer luck of having her arm in cast, she avoided a boobytrapped suicide. Later in her career, she describes working the nation’s largest mass murder, the attack on 9/11, where she and her colleagues initially relied on family members’ descriptions to help distinguish among the 21,900 body parts of the victims.

This is the fascinating and stunning real-life story of a woman who, in dealing with death every day, learned surprising lessons about life—and how some of those lessons saved her from becoming a statistic herself.