Catching up with Clea Koff

This month we are reading The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, a novel that takes us to the Balkans, and in the company of a young woman and her grandfather, both physicians, and a lot of inventive folktale-like storytelling, into the physical and psychological wounds of several generations of conflict.  There's even some digging for bones, and that reminded me of an earlier nonfiction Rights Readers selection from some years back, The Bone Woman, a memoir by Clea Koff. Koff is a forensic anthropologist who was part of the team investigating war crimes in both Rwanda and the Balkans. Here's an interview from last summer where she explains the kind of evidence a forensic team working for the International Criminal Tribune for the Former Yugoslavia might bring to bear on the ongoing trials of war criminals such as Ratko Mladic. For readers of The Tiger's Wife who'd like to know the reality behind the book, The Bone Woman would be a good place to start.

Of course, I was interested in finding out what Koff has been up to recently and was surprised to learn that she is the author of two mysteries, Freezing and the forthcoming Passing about a pair of L.A-based forensic investigators solving missing persons identification cases. Sounds promising! Mystery fans! Let me know if you think one of these would be a good option for our August mystery month selection some time...