Book review: The Quick and the Dead

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The Quick and the Dead – Cynric Temple-Camp (Harper Collins, $39.99)

Reviewed by Louise Ward

Wardini Books

Dr Cynric Temple-Camp is well placed to offer stories of death – he's been a medical doctor, specifically a pathologist, for decades and in this book tells us of his most fascinating cases practising in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and in New Zealand.

The book lays out a plethora of ways in which we might meet our end. Within these pages are the investigations into a young man lost in the bush and found in baffling circumstances, a body so decomposed that the police laid steps for the pathology team to get to it, the incredible creatures around the world that burrow, colonise, inhabit and kill.

The author has a fascination with death, a deep attentiveness to the person his subject was, and a clear determination to get the bottom of things. There are cases that have stayed with Temple-Camp for years, only reaching resolution when informed by new research or a chance conversation.

The book reads like a heart-stoppingly urgent thriller, each case taking up a few pages within a chapter based around similar subjects. The action deals with cases in Zimbabwe and Manawatu, worlds apart but connected in the relentless universality of death and the necessity of finding answers: for the police, for the family, for the deceased. The author balances our macabre interest in the deliciously ghastly details of death with humour, delicacy and frank, affectionate portraits of those with whom he works.

These tales are respectfully told in a kind but straightforward way that honours the dead. Temple-Camp's stories are not for the faint of heart. You will learn more about maggots than you ever thought you needed to know. You might also be reminded that most of us never know when it will be our time; live each day as well as possible.