Written in Bone by Sue Black combines several literary styles and techniques to create a book that is part memoir, part scientific treatise, and part mystery story. Each genre contributes to readers' interest and enjoyment and enhances Black's narrative and descriptions. They also support the author's main purposes for writing this book.

Black has several purposes for writing Written in Bone. First, she wants to present the job of forensic anthropologists so that readers understand what these scientists do and how important their task is. Black and her colleagues listen to bones. They reconstruct the stories of human beings from their bones, and they search for truth.

But at the same time, Black also wants to present the complexity and beauty of the human body, especially its bones. She takes her readers on a "journey" through the skeleton, focusing on the details of each section of bones. She encourages her readers to realize precisely how remarkable their bodies are and how much they do with their bodies that they may not even be conscious of.

Finally, Black's book confronts readers with the cases she has encountered as a forensic anthropologist. These cases show Black and her colleagues in action and reveal the scientific processes they follow. Some cases are fully resolved; others are left at least partially in mystery. They all illustrate the importance of the bones and their stories and what bones can reveal to people who take the time to pay attention.

To fulfill these purposes, Black combines the genres of memoir, science, and mystery. A memoir is a form of biography focusing on only a part of a person's life. In this case, Black concentrates primarily on her professional life as a forensic anthropologist. She gives plenty of details about her cases, related travels, and court testimonies. Yet she also includes other aspects of her life, including her experience of sexual abuse as a child, when they relate to her work and her views of her work.

At the same time, though, this book is partly a scientific treatise, although it is geared toward a general audience. Black gets into the details about human bones. She names them, discusses their development before and after birth, and describes their locations and functions. Yet, Black does so in a way that is easy for most readers to understand. She defines scientific terms and explains complex concepts with clarity and precision.

Finally, Black weaves in the mystery genre. Black has worked on many cases throughout her professional career, including murder investigations. She has a knack for building suspense by describing her cases so readers become involved and interested. Unlike fictional mysteries, however, Black's cases do not always have fully satisfying endings. Sometimes, the person remains unidentified, and the culprit is never caught.

As Black combines her genres and fulfills her purposes, she also employs a variety of literary styles and techniques to make her text more appealing to her audience. First, Black offers a blend of scientific and narrative styles that make her book easy to comprehend for a general audience. For instance, in the chapter about the hands, she identifies the bones scientifically with statements like "The radius in the forearm corresponds to the tibia in the leg and the ulna to the fibula." But she also makes sure that her definitions are accessible to readers.

Black explains the scientific techniques she uses in her work, too. She describes, for example, the technique of superimposition, which "involves overlaying a photograph of the head of a missing person on to a photograph of the skull, taken from the same...