A Life in Death: The True Story of a Career in Disaster Victim Identification

By Richard Venables

WINNER – PEOPLE’S BOOK PRIZE 2017

This updated edition contains additional material on the Hillsborough disaster.

Detective Inspector Richard Venables (QPM, rtd.) has helped identify thousands of bodies all over the world, piecing together fragments from tsunamis, transport and other disasters to return the victims to their loved ones.

A world-renowned expert in Disaster Victim Identification who was a member of the UK Police’s Major Disaster Advisory Team, Richard’s destiny was shaped in part by his presence as a uniformed sergeant at the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster.

In A Life in Death, Richards tells his extraordinary story, of how death came to be a key feature of his personal and professional life, as well as how he coped with the biggest challenge of his career: the 2004 Asian Tsunami, the deadliest event of its kind ever experienced by human civilization, that claimed 230,000 lives.