Author Description

Easy in the islands? Not for forensic dentist Adam Dunn. Seeking a tropical respite from the winter blues of Chicago, Dunn encounters on Florida's Calusa Island soft skies, lulling seas...and a dead man's skull. A young man's tragic childhood summons Dunn's own troubled past while yielding the revelation that even in murder, the sea shall give up her dead.Adam Dunn is a fresh face in the world of forensic science and crime detection--a dental forensics detective. A throwback in his sensibility, Dunn brings his science to the law in a manner that recalls Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: "He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.He is an insubordinate cuss, an admirable trait in an age when the torturer's first line of defense is that he was merely following orders."Dunn is not LA (Sam Spade, Marlowe, Lew Archer), he's not Boston (Spenser, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro), not Edmonton (Temperance Brennan), and not Richmond (Kay Scarpetta).No, Dunn is Chicago, moody and somber. Or, as fellow Chicagoan Nelson Algren wrote: "Chicago is an October sort of city, even in spring." Dunn's adventures represent a brew as gothic as Stieg Larsson's tales, as historically chilling as "Devil in the White City," and as brass-knuckled as Chandler's mean streets. A blend of noir fiction with forensic science, the stories are historically faithful, forensically accurate, and based on real events.Forensic dentistry, or odontology, blends art and science in the pursuit of justice. From dentist Paul Revere identifying fallen revolutionary soldiers to its use confirming the deaths of notorious figures such as John Wilkes Booth, Adolf Hitler, and Lee Harvey Oswald, to imprisoning serial killer Ted Bundy on dental evidence, the critical role of forensic dentistry rings through history.Clayton Adam Luz, a former science writer with the American Dental Association, doesn't mind going to the dentist, not at all.*Watch fo