Glen McDonald (1)

Glen McDonald was the Vancouver Coroner and British Columbia Supervisory Coroner for a quarter century. This memoir of his work, the lessons learned and the practices instituted therein, is interesting and dramatic, if occasionally repetitive and confusing. (McDonald's book is interspersed with comments from John Kirkwood, whom I presume to have been brought in to add continuity and wordage to the manuscript. The book makes no easily obvious definition of which one is writing at any given moment, so the voice changes back and forth without much notice.) The circumstances and events McDonald describes are almost all fascinating, though he is not an expert story-teller. A dramatic set-up will be constructed over several pages, only to be wrapped up in a line or two along the lines of "well, we solved it." The most notable aspect of the book, from a public interest aspect, is McDonald's description of the aftermath of the death of film star Errol Flynn, which opens the book. Flynn died suddenly at 50 during a visit to Vancouver, and McDonald gives a full (and rather graphic) account of the events and discoveries surrounding the film legend's demise. McDonald preaches a great deal of compassion and sympathy on the part of his department for the voiceless dead and their families, yet he sometimes betrays an unpleasant callous humor that probably serves morgue staff workers well in private but which might better have been kept private.… (mehr)