Earl Swift

Where They Lay: a Forensic Expedition in the Jungles of Laos Earl Swift

In this gripping true-grit adventure story, award-winning journalist Earl Swift accompanies an elite scientific team on a search for a military pilot lost thirty years ago in Southeast Asia. The recovery mission is part of an effort by the military's Central Identification Laboratory--Hawaii (CILHI), the largest forensic lab in the world, whose methods combine the latest in forensic technology with old-fashioned bushwhacking, archaeology, and detective work. The quest to find Major Jack Barker and his three-man helicopter crew brings the team to deeply impoverished Laos, where they comb the jungle floor for clues to the decades-old crash amid vipers, monsoons, and unexploded bombs. Expertly recounted, Where They Lay is a suspenseful, often harrowing tale of mud, sweat and science.