Post-Mortem — Jon Wells

A jogger running in a field near the perimeter of the African Lion Safari theme park in southern Ontario stumbles across a near-mummified skeleton. The remains are studied at a hospital morgue by a forensic pathologist, a forensic anthropologist and a forensic entomologist (known as "the bug lady"). They discover that the victim was female, non-Caucasian. But who was she?

Award-winning journalist and author Jon Wells delivers a gripping, CSI-style story that was shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis Award for best crime non-fiction. Post-Mortem shows how Hamilton, Ontario, homicide investigator Paul Lahaie and his team chase a case in which the first challenge is finding the victim.

One of the forensic detectives hits upon the secret to cracking the identity of the dead woman: rehydrating the hardened skin on her fingertips and rolling it for prints. A match is found to Yvette Budram, a woman from Guyana who immigrated to Canada and married a man named Mohan Ramkissoon. The police soon discover the first of many twists in the case--Yvette's prints are in the Canadian Police Information Centre system because she has a criminal record for uttering death threats against her husband. Mohan denies doing anything wrong. A blood-spatter expert is brought in--but what can the police now prove in this cold case?