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The article deals with the rise and fall of celebrity pathologists. Celebrity pathology was born a hundred years ago in England following Sir Bernard Spilsbury's identification of scar tissue on a fragment of flesh found in the cellar that secured the conviction of Hawley Harvey Crippen for the murder of his wife. A century later, a research paper was published in the "Journal of Forensic Sciences" claiming that Crippen's story does not lie in rotting remains but instead found in sanitised biomatter abstracted from the body. It says that the findings of this paper represent a marker of the boundaries of Spilbury's long rein. Also discussed is the role of modern forensics of DNA in the death of the era of celebrity pathology.

In this article the author comments on the lack of an effective communication between doctors and the families of their patients. It describes the author's disappointment with the automatic classification of the death of a partner as a coroner's case as his death was sudden. It cites the ethical and moral obligation to involve the family of patients face to face despite the lack of legal obligation for the coroner's department to discuss with the family the necessity of postmortem examination.

The author reflects on the implications of the emergence of bad stories about British coroners. He comments on the inclusion of secret inquests into the Coroners and Justice Bill, which eliminated the ancient right of every citizen to a coroner's inquest in open court. He discusses an investigation into the death of newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson during the G20 demonstrations in London, England. The author also favors an inquest that is free of any sort of criticism in relation to accidental and suspicious deaths.