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?

JON WELLS reports on crime and a variety of other subjects for The Hamilton Spectator, and he has written seven books. He has won two National Newspaper Awards and sixteen Ontario Newspaper Awards, including Journalist of the Year for his true-crime series on James Kopp. Post-Mortem was shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis Award for best crime non-fiction. Born in Montreal, Wells has a master's degree in journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa. His true-crime research has taken him into forensic laboratories and shooting ranges, and to India, Ireland, France, San Francisco, New York City and western Canada. He has interviewed a half dozen convicted killers in prison. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

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