Whispers of the Dead (31 page)

I fought down an urge to laugh.
'Just a work trip,' I said. 'But I'm back now.'
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