McDermid, best known for her gritty psychological thrillers, has interviewed a wide range (a morgue? a graveyard?) of forensic scientists and has revisited some of the most gruesome true life mysteries to piece together a gripping history of the anatomy of crime.
"It was a nightmare -- it was like a Joel-Peter Witkin photograph," he added, invoking that photographer known for his often gruesome still lifes of body parts.
It was adapted from James Ellroy's dense novel, which outlines a fictional conspiracy around the gruesome real-life murder of Betty Short, an aspiring Hollywood actress.
Trouble is, this gruesome real-life tale may leave you with nightmares far worse than the ones brought on by the prospect of having to read Melville's thick book.
This is the gruesome real-life incident, described by Elizabeth Nunez in an author's note at the close of her third novel, that served as the catalyst for "Bruised Hibiscus".
And "Kattekoppen," by Will Mackin, looks at the gruesome absurdities of life at a remote SEAL outpost in Afghanistan.
(Readers should be warned that certain passages outdo the gruesome episode in "Life of Pi" in which a hyena devours a still-living zebra).
When confronted by the gruesome reality of life for some of society's most vulnerable and damaged (not to mention violent and damaging) young people, there is a temptation to wring one's hands and say: "Well, what can you do?" In this case, the answer is clear and compelling.
Notwithstanding the Nuremberg trials and Margaret Bourke-White's gruesome pictures in Life magazine of the liberation of Buchenwald in April 1945, the US tended to forget that as onlookers to Hitler's effort to eliminate Jews from Europe, the US was tacitly complicit in what happened.
(1962), which displays slashing insight and witty dialogue in its gruesome portrayal of married life.
