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The detective story was more or less invented by Edgar Allen Poe, but he more or less lost interest with the genre and moved on, with the next leading practitioner being Arthur Conan Doyle with his Sherlock Holmes tales. It was about 33 years before Agatha Christie entered the detective mystery field, and she wound up becoming one of the most well-known English authors of the 20th century. Her success was so extraordinary she became the bestselling novelist of all time, with only the Bible and Shakespeare exceeding her sales.

From a skeleton, a skull, or a mere fragment of burnt thighbone, prominent forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples can deduce the age, gender, and ethnicity of a murder victim, the manner in which the person was dispatched, and, ultimately, the identity of the killer. In Dead Men Do Tell Tales, Dr. Maples revisits his strangest, most interesting, and most horrific investigations, from the baffling cases of conquistador Francisco Pizarro and Vietnam MIAs to the mysterious deaths of President Zachary Taylor and the family of Czar Nicholas II.