Crime books and television murder mysteries are always popular, and Coroner Dr Peter Dean will look at their history featuring characters like Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.
We’ll look at some of Holmes’s more recent crime counterparts, including Medical Examiner ‘Quincy’, and go behind the scenes advising on the medical aspects of crime dramas. Dr Peter Dean qualified first in dentistry and then in medicine. After a brief return to dental surgery, he trained as a General Practitioner and, while working in an East London GP practice, started working part time as a Forensic Medical Examiner or ‘Police Surgeon’ with the Metropolitan Police in London. As his interest in this area grew, he became a coroner after completing a Master of Laws degree and then divided his time between practicing Clinical Forensic Medicine in London for over twenty five years and working as a coroner until his retirement in 2018 as Senior Coroner for Suffolk. He has also advised on the forensic aspects of many television drama series including Silent Witness (since Series 3 and currently working on Series 27), Waking the Dead, Ripper Street, Killing Eve, Midsomer Murders, Unforgotten, Whitechapel, and the new versions of Van Der Valkand Death on the Nile. He has given advice to authors including Kathy Reichs, Peter James (also appearing, to his surprise while he was reading the book, as a character in one of them) and Jeffrey Archer. Peter has a particular interest in the historical development of coroners and forensic medicine, and is a Past President of the Coroners’ Society of England and Wales and the Forensic and Legal Medicine Section of the Royal Society of Medicine.