Coy Coroners in Crime Thrillers

I am reading a crime thriller that I'm rather enjoying (Giles Blunt, Black Fly Season); it's the second of his that I've read and so far and he suits my taste. It's got elements of police procedural to it: the central recurring characters are police detectives working in the fictional northern-Ontario town of Algonquin Bay.

This also means that when bodies are discovered we get to see some police procedure in action, the scene-of-crime people get called out, people in bunny suits search for forensic evidence, and there's always a coroner who shows up to certify death. These coroner characters are almost universally made into the comic relief through their strange personalities, inappropriate senses of humor, or other colorful characteristics.

But now we come to the bit that makes me peevish. In every book of this type that I read the coroner shows up and starts looking at the body. The coroner pronounces the body dead and makes a "preliminary assessment" that the smashed in skull ("trauma with blunt instrument") or the gaping hole in the chest ('apparent gun-shot wound") probably was involved and may even have led to death.

Then, as if on cue, the impatient detective says something like "What can you tell me about the time of death, Doc?" There ensues a conversation that invariably runs along these lines:

"What can you tell me about the time of death, Doc?"

"You know I can't say anything definite about that. There are so many variables to consider. It's been cold out lately. This is a wet location…. Maybe we'll know more once we get him/her on the table."

"Sure, sure, but can't you give me something?"

"Nothing you can use in court, of course."

"Just a rough estimate will help. Anything. I won't hold you to it."

"Off the record I'd say, oh, he/she's been dead

  • five-and-a-half hours
  • 24 to 36 hours
  • a good 5 days

give or take a few hours, of course."

Has neither of these people ever read one of these novels? Why must the coy coroner wait to be asked every bloody time by the detective and then demur for some many paragraphs?

Okay, I realize that this is the one chance (or maybe not, since there will usually be two or more bodies before the book ends and the coroner will get to repeat his/her reluctance to the detective, although if there are three bodies or more chances are there will appear at least two coroners, a second to provide comic relief from the comic relief of the first and to allow the author to go through the entire catechism again with a different character) for the author to fill up a page or two with amusing dialog before the minor character of the coroner leaves the stage.

But still. Is this realistic at this point? Is there a coroner alive–even within the pages of a crime thriller–who doesn't know that "time of death" is the first thing the impatient detective is going to ask about?

Posted on August 21, 2008 at 16.27 by jns · Permalink
In: Crime Fiction, Feeling Peevish

One Response

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  1. Written by Bill Morrison
    on Thursday, 21 August 2008 at 17.36
    Permalink

    "He's dead, Jim."

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