Published on October 31, 2024 at 9:25 p.m. / Modified on October 31, 2024 at 9:34 p.m.
He is a rock star who, in the absence of Fender, masterfully wields shears and scalpels. As his title suggests, Doctor Philippe Boxho is a forensic pathologist – but far from lurking under the neon lights of a basement, he shines on the stages in front of which hundreds of fans crowd. As in Lausanne, where the Belgian, in the middle of a tour, stopped in mid-October to present his new book, Death in the face. At Pathé Flon, Fnac, organizer of the event, had to quickly double the capacity to allow more than 500 people to follow the conference – and, for a good half of them, to obtain a signing .
The outpouring is taking place on social networks, with nearly half a million subscribers on TikTok, and even in bookstores: each of Philippe Boxho’s works has sold more than 200,000 copies – the equivalent of a novel by Amélie Nothomb – and they should soon be translated into around thirty languages. This professor of criminology, who has been working in the flat country for over thirty years, has the art of making the dead speak. In his books, he recounts cross-cases over the course of his long career. Cases of murders that are often strange, even incredible, that forensic medicine has made it possible to resolve by investigating the circumstances of the death. Here, it is a well-hidden orifice on the skull which reveals that contrary to appearances, this woman who died at the wheel was shot down at point blank range; there, it is a farmer found drowned in a vat of milk who turns out, as the doctor’s analyzes will prove, to have been strangled by her husband. He will be sentenced to 30 years in prison.
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