Whispers of the Dead

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Whispers of the Dead is a work of fiction, but the Anthropology Research Facility in Tennessee is real. Thanks are therefore due to Professor Richard Jantz, Director of the Forensic Anthropology Center in Knoxville, for granting permission to feature the facility and for his help with technical aspects. Dr Arpad Vass provided his usual quick responses to forensic queries and allowed Tom Lieberman to borrow his research, while Kristin Helm, Public Information Officer of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, was a mine of valuable information.

Thanks to my agents, Mic Cheetham and Simon Kavanagh, to Camilla Ferrier and all at the Marsh Agency, Simon Taylor and the team at Transworld, Caitlin Alexander at Bantam Dell, Peter Dench, Jeremy Freeston, Ben Steiner and SCF. I’d also like to thank my sister Julie and Jan Williams, without whom the writing of this book would have almost certainly have taken far longer: as someone who has now fully recovered from ME, I can recommend the Lightning Process to anyone who hasn’t.

Finally, as ever, a huge thank-you to my wife, Hilary. I really couldn’t do it without her.

Simon Beckett, 2008