David Hunter is a forensic anthropologist. He studies what happens to the human body after death — decomposition, insect activity, bone damage — and uses that knowledge to help police solve crimes. It is not a career that invites small talk at parties, but Hunter is good at it and the police keep calling.
Simon Beckett created Hunter after visiting the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee in 2002. The Body Farm is a research facility where donated human remains are left to decompose in controlled conditions so scientists can study the process. Beckett went there to write a newspaper article. He came back with a character.
In The Chemistry of Death (2006), Hunter is living quietly in a Norfolk village, working as a GP and trying to forget his previous life. A body turns up in the marshes, and his expertise pulls him back in. Each novel since has put him in a different setting — a remote Scottish island in Written in Bone, the Body Farm itself in Whispers of the Dead, the Essex backwaters in The Restless Dead. The settings change, but Hunter stays the same: methodical, reluctant, and unable to walk away from a case once the science pulls him in.
The Bone Garden (2026) is the seventh novel, arriving after a seven-year gap since The Scent of Death. Beckett’s books have sold over 12 million copies worldwide.
Reading Order
See the complete David Hunter reading order for all books in the series.