In her memoir “Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner,” co-authored with her husband, T.J. Mitchell, Melinek chronicles her time at the city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner — and it’s nothing like what you see on television. “I get a kick out of the female ME with bedroom eyes, stiletto heels and a lot of cleavage,” she writes. At murder scenes, “I wore sensible shoes and a windbreaker.” She also learned an old cop trick: If you’re recovering a body in an apartment building, ask every tenant to make coffee — it covers the smell. “Oldest trick in the book,” one officer told her.

The most insane deaths seen by an NYC medical examiner | New York Post Sunday, August 3, 2014 @ 10:03pm