With detailed reference to acts of international terrorism, war crimes, major disasters, serial murder and domestic violence, crime journalist Chester Stern explores how Dr West helped police and juries understand the full horror of such incidents, how fresh interpretations of existing evidence supported damage claims by victim's relatives, and how, in the strange circumstances of Robert Maxwell's apparently drowning, he uncovered crucial clues which put a whole new complexion on the mystery of the tycon's death.

Probing death in many bizarre forms, this is a compelling, chilling but never lurid insight into the work of a man for whom death is a way of life.