Working Stiff Book Review
Working Stiff by Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell
If anyone actually knows me, they know about my extreme morbid curiosity. I am fascinated by death, crime scenes, suicide stories and all the gory pictures that go along with it. This has led to many books, websites and photographs I have read and examined over the years and this book is near the top of my favourites list. Working Stiff is the memoir of forensic pathologist, Judy Melinek, during her two years training as a New York City medical examiner. It follows and examines many of the 262 autopsies she did in that time, the people she met and how it impacted her, her family and her outlook on life.
Melinek starts the book by conveying how she came to be a forensic pathologist. She originally began training to be a surgeon, but the extreme hours took a toll on her to the point where she was fainting in the operating room and operating on patients while sick with the flu! Understandably she quit and chose the route of forensic pathologist. I enjoyed reading about her early days and what led to her eventual career and how it impacted her relationship with her husband. I have to commend her husband, for I have never read a book with a more patient, devoted man in my life.
The subsequent chapters are covered mostly by cause or manner of death and the autopsies she performed on people who fit those distinctions. There is a chapter about suicide, murder, misadventure, odd cases, decomp and so on. She holds nothing back when describing the bodies and their smell. We see cases and read about the bodies of people who threw themselves under a subway train, who decomposed in a mailbox for days, whose body broke into multiple pieces after jumping off the balcony in the atrium of a hotel and hit multiple railings on the way down. There is no shortage of gory details. With the gory details, however, are easy to understand medical terminology and explanations of how she comes to the conclusions of manner and cause of death. I loved reading these scientific tidbits and about rare cases such as the case of a TRALI.
The height of the book for me, and I’m sure many others, was the chapter on 9/11. Being a New York City medical examiner meant Melinek was part of the response team who spend months identifying the remains of the victims of the attack. It was extremely sobering to read about all the different pieces of people she had to process and how bodies sat in refrigerated Fed-Ex and UPS trucks. How the identifying efforts had to be done under tents outside. The details of the bodies were horrific and some were difficult to read. There were the hands of people who still had wedding bands, wallets in a burned torso with a picture of a young child, someones entire hand in another persons body. It really brought to light the sheer force and destruction of the attacks. This chapter was certainly the hardest to read.
I do not have many critiques for this book at all. It was well written, the scientific terms were easy to understand and it was educational and interesting. It is definitely not for the squeamish or faint of heart. The only thing I remember bothering me is how she constantly spoke negatively or bitterly about her father’s suicide. I understand that it can be viewed as a selfish act by some people, but she sounded down right bitter and accusatory and it upset me a little to read as someone who suffers with mental health. All in all, this book was amazing.
Rating: 4.5/5 stars