Uncover ‘Skeletons In The Closet’

“Skeletons in the Closet: Stories from the County Morgue,” by Tobin T. Buhk and Stephen D. Cohle, M.D., 2008, Prometheus Books, $27.95, 408 pages, includes index and notes: You try to do everything right.
You eat from all the major food groups. You hit the gym regularly. You read the labels to make sure you’re not ingesting bad-for-you things. Bedtime is at the same time every night, you gave up smoking and drinking, and you buckle up when you get behind the wheel.
And you know what? You can’t escape it.
Someday, you’ll die.
In the new book “Skeletons in the Closet” by Tobin T. Buhk and Stephen D. Cohle, M.D., you’ll read about the ways people die – accidents, murder, natural causes – and a real-life Michigan forensic team that investigates them all.
As a volunteer for the Kent County Morgue in the western part of Michigan, Buhk spends a lot of time in the morgue, assisting with death investigation and, indirectly, catching criminals.
In this book (his second with Cohle), he and Cohle write about cases they’ve investigated and ways a body can meet an untimely demise.
Since identical twins possess identical DNA, mistaken identity is possible. This makes it easy for one twin to kill the other and assume his identity.
In the opening case of this book, one twin has an unfortunate snowmobile accident. Was his brother hiding a murder?
After a frozen-stiff stiff was carried into the morgue, a convoluted case comes before the courts.
Did a man kill one of his employees or was the man’s father the murderer? In a he-said-he-said-he-said-he-said argument, nobody pays in the end.
When paramedics are called to the home of a distraught mother, they do everything they can to save her infant son, but the baby dies.
Until the boy’s autopsy, no one had thought to look into the deaths of the mother’s other two children.
When a woman’s nude body is discovered floating in a small lake near Lake Michigan, authorities determine that she was a Wisconsin resident.
What still confounds them is the belief that she floated over 100 miles to the point where she was found.
Or did she?
Do you like to read while you eat meals? It’s safe with this book, but only barely …
Although authors Buhk and Cohle tend to wax melodramatic, overuse clichés and meander on topics, it’s forgivable. 
You won’t mind because this book reads like a fictional mystery with all the whodunits, suspense and sleuthing.
The difference is that here, every word is true but not disgustingly so.
There are few stomach-churning case studies in “Skeletons in the Closet.”
Yes, there’s blood and a little bit of gore, but you expect that in a true-life CSI-type book.
It’s not the focus, though. Buhk and Cohle present the crimes and the evidence without overly-graphic descriptions of the crime scene.  The eeeeeeuuuuwwww factor exists in this book, but not enough to give you nightmares.
Make no bones about it: if you like true crime stories, mysteries, or if you don’t miss any of the “CSI” incarnations on TV, grab this. “Skeletons in the Closet” is a book you’ll be dying to read.

‘PLEASURE’ REVIEW
“Pleasure” by Eric Jerome Dickey, 2008, Brilliance Audio, $38.95, 13 CDs/about 15 hours: “I’ll wash out your mouth with soap if you say that word again!”
Remember hearing that from your mama or grandma? Back in the day, nasty words weren’t for polite company or any company at all, really. Dirty words had to be scrubbed from your tongue with a wet washrag and a rub of soap. After that, only the bravest (or the dumbest) kids ever said “those words” in mama or grandma’s presence again.
How times have changed. 
In that same vein, Eric Jerome Dickey needs a whole grocery store shelf worth of soap for his newest novel “Pleasure” (performed on CD by Susan Spain).  Listen for even five minutes and see if you don’t desperately want to wash out your brain.
Nia Simone Bijou has a pretty good life. She’s got a nice apartment in the ATL and a good job as a science fiction writer. But something’s missing.
Although she craves love, she pushes it away. She doesn’t, for sure, need love from her old boyfriend, Logan, who offered her a diamond and sends her flowers every day. She leaves the flowers outside on her doorstep because flowers aren’t what she wants and neither is Logan.
Nia Simone wants pleasure, pure and simple.
Pleasure is something Logan can’t give her.
But Mark and Karl, the twins?  They can please Nia Simone, alone and together. She met them on a run in the park near Atlanta, two identical gods, sweat streaming down their perfect bodies.
Karl, the twin with tattoos, is for physical pleasure. Mark, the smarter, married twin, is for affection. Nia Simone sleeps with Karl, then Mark. When one twin is in her bed, the other is always somehow, some way, nearby.
And yet, it’s not enough.
When Karl takes her on a photo shoot in North Carolina, Nia Simone meets Miss Kiki Sunshine.  As Karl snaps Kiki Sunshine’s picture in a sunny park near the trees, Nia Simone watches closely.
Another body. Another bed. Another pleasure.
But is pleasure fleeting, or is this – sneaking around, sleeping with two men and more – the way Nia Simone wants to live her life? Is the pleasure worth the pain she feels in her life and the pain she knows she’s causing others?
Alrighty, then.
If I had a quarter for every time the word “moan” shows up in this audiobook, I could retire on my very own island, happy in the knowledge that I would never have to listen to rubbish like this, ever again.
Laden with Kama Sutra claptrap and adolescent euphemisms, “Pleasure” is boring, pointless, plotless near-pornography, a men’s magazine fantasy complete with twins, threesomes and foursomes in public, private and everywhere.
Nia Simone is not particularly likeable and her “Identical Sins” are irritating with their unearned jealousy and the silly competition between them. 
In short, I took no pleasure in “Pleasure.”

TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book.