★Fans of true crime will love these grisly tales from behind-the-fringes of the autopsy room
★Based on fascinating and unusual case studies including torture, electrocution and lightning deaths
★Blumenthal's first book, Autopsy, sold more than 7,000 copies

Every contact leaves a trace; a single strand of hair or a tiny droplet of blood can be the silent witness at a crime scene. Locard's Exchange Principle underpins all forensic science and holds truth to the perpetrator of a crime will bring something to the crime scene and leave with something from it.

Forensic experts use this principle daily to catch murderers and assassins. In Risking Life for Death, South African forensic pathologist Ryan Blumenthal offers a master class in this singular forensic technique based on real-life forensic cases. With more than twenty years' experience in the field, Blumenthal demonstrates how to look for clues and traces, and how what he does not find at autopsy is often more important than what he does find. In other words, the absence of evidence can sometimes be of greater value than the presence of evidence.

His account also highlights the dangers forensic pathologists are exposed to daily. At any time they can be faced with life-threatening infections, toxic gases and the hazards associated with high-profile cases — in effect, risking their life to solve someone else's death.

An understanding of Locard's Exchange Principle can help you become a medical detective in your own life, can help you be a happier person and can even provide you with a better philosophy for growing older. Amid gruesome images, animalistic human behaviour, gore, forensic pathology, poisoning, lightning deaths, Locard's Exchange Principle, torture, viral agents, weapons...

RYAN BLUMENTHAL is a forensic pathologist with more than twenty years' experience in the field, and the author of Autopsy: Life in the Trenches of Forensic Pathology in Africa, which was published by Jonathan Ball Publishers in August 2020, became a non-fiction bestseller in South Africa.

His eight-part documentary Pathology Polluted was aired from 9 to 20 November 2020 on People's Weather (Channel 180) on DStv. It was viewed by over 2.2 million people.