Bookwork: ‘There isn’t a research morgue like this in the whole of North America, never mind just the UK’

BODY OF THOUGHT

To Dundee, where last Saturday night crime writer Stuart MacBride was the latest to do his bit for the brilliant “Million for a Morgue” fundraising competition dreamed up by Val MacDermid and Professor Sue Black.

Why brilliant? Let me count the ways. First, because the embalming techniques to be used will revolutionise the training of doctors and surgeons. For the first time, they will be able to learn from working on corpses that are flexible, the chemicals flowing through their veins imitating the pulse of life itself. Secondly, this only confirms the university’s reputation as a locus for cutting-edge medicine. There isn’t a research morgue like this in the whole of North America, never mind just the UK.

Then, there’s the fund-raising campaign itself. What a genius idea to get ten of the world’s top crime writers to use their fans to compete for the honour of naming the morgue after themselves (each £1 pledged translates into a vote). So far, Tess Gerritsen is out in front, closely followed by Val McDermid. Incidentally, Lee Child’s fans shouldn’t be put off by the notion of the “Child Morgue”: if he wins, it will probably be known as the Jack Reacher Morgue.

BLACK ARTS

Finally, there’s the work of Professor Black herself – one of the most inspirational and dedicated women you could hope to meet. The serious part of her job is enormously important: only last month, for example, her evidence helped to identify a Stirlingshire man found guilty of raping a 14-month-old baby.

Probably no woman in Scotland has seen more dead bodies – in Kosovo she led a British forensic team investigating Serbian war crimes that exhumed more than 1,000 bodies – yet off duty, she is great company. She also regularly answers her friend Val McDermid’s requests for technical assistance. For The Grave Tattoo, Val needed to know whether a body buried in a peat bog for 200 years would still a) have its skin and b) whether a tattoo would still show up on it. Not only would it, said the good prof, but even if the arm with the tattoo had been hacked off, we’d still know its colour from the ink traces in the underarm lymph nodes. Like I say, a fascinating woman. Give her that million. Log onto millionforamorgue.com right away.