Simon Beckett: Whispers of the Dead

An elderly woman beamed up at me from the step. ‘Ah, Dr Hunter, it is you! I heard someone moving about downstairs and wanted to make sure everything was OK.’

‘Everything’s fine, thanks, Mrs. Katsoulis.’ My neighbour lived in the flat above mine. I’d hardly spoken to her before I’d been attacked the year before, but since then she’d taken it upon herself to turn vigilante. All four foot ten of her.

She hadn’t finished with me yet. She peered past the hall into the living room, where my bags were still waiting to be unpacked.

‘I thought I hadn’t seen you around for a while. Have you been anywhere nice?’

She stared up at me expectantly. I felt my mouth start to twitch as I fought down an urge to laugh.

‘Just a work trip,’ I said. ‘But I’m back now.’

Whispers of the Dead is a work of fiction, but the Anthropology Research Facility in Tennessee is real. Thanks are therefore due to Professor Richard Jantz, Director of the Forensic Anthropology Center in Knoxville, for granting permission to feature the facility and for his help with technical aspects. Dr Arpad Vass provided his usual quick responses to forensic queries and allowed Tom Lieberman to borrow his research, while Kristin Helm, Public Information Officer of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, was a mine of valuable information.

Thanks to my agents, Mic Cheetham and Simon Kavanagh, to Camilla Ferrier and all at the Marsh Agency, Simon Taylor and the team at Transworld, Caitlin Alexander at Bantam Dell, Peter Dench, Jeremy Freeston, Ben Steiner and SCF. I’d also like to thank my sister Julie and Jan Williams, without whom the writing of this book would have almost certainly have taken far longer: as someone who has now fully recovered from ME, I can recommend the Lightning Process to anyone who hasn’t.

Finally, as ever, a huge thank-you to my wife, Hilary. I really couldn’t do it without her.

Simon Beckett, 2008

SIMON BECKETTis the bestselling author of three thrillers featuring forensics expert Dr David Hunter— The Chemistry of Death, Written in Bone and now Whispers of the Dead . In 2002, he went on an assignment for the Daily Telegraph Magazine to Tennessee’s world-famous Anthropological Research Facility, the Body Farm. As well as providing the inspiration for David Hunter, what he saw and learned there, together with his meticulous approach to research, helps make his novels so frighteningly authentic. Simon Beckett lives in Sheffield. To find out more about him and his books, visit www.simonbeckett.com.

A Delacorte Press Book / June 2009

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Published by Bantam Dell, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2009 by Hunter Publications Ltd.

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beckett, Simon.

Whispers of the dead / Simon Beckett.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-440-33822-2

1. Forensic anthropologists—Fiction. 2. Serial murderers—Fiction. 3. English— United States—Fiction. 4. Tennessee—Fiction.

PR6052.E286 W47 2009

823/.914 22 2009001673

www.bantamdell.com

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