12 December 2011
Peter James offers dinner to 'Million for a Morgue' donors
Bestselling crime writer Peter James is offering a 'dead good' dinner to one lucky donor to the University of Dundee's 'Million For A Morgue' campaign.
Everyone who registers a vote in Million For A Morgue before the end of December will go into a draw for the prize. Each vote costs £1, which goes towards the target of £1million to help build a new morgue at Dundee's world-renowned Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, headed by Professor Sue Black.
Peter, author of the hugely popular Roy Grace novels, is one of ten authors supporting the University of Dundee’s 'Million For A Morgue' campaign. The author with the most votes will have the new morgue at Dundee named after them.
Each month of the campaign will focus on one of the writers and offer special prizes. For December it is Peter James, who is offering dinner for one lucky couple, with rail travel within the UK also paid for.
Peter has also donated a signed hardback copy of his latest novel 'Perfect People' to give away to another lucky voter. Each month Million For A Morgue will give away signed books from each of the authors taking part, with winners drawn at random from all those who vote.
'I can promise a dead good dinner, to be eaten in a considerably more salubrious environment than a mortuary and with a full-bodied wine that has come from a fine vine and not a human vein,' said Peter.
Anyone who wants to donate and vote in the campaign can do so by visiting the website at www.million4amorgue.com, or by texting to the relevant author’s number as listed below.
The authors are:
- Val McDermid (text: VALM10)
- Peter James (text: PETJ10)
- Tess Gerritsen (text: TESG10)
- Kathy Reichs (text: KATR10)
- Harlan Coben (text: HARC10)
- Lee Child (text: LEEC10)
- Jeffery Deaver (text: JEFD10)
- Mark Billingham (text: MARB10)
- Jeff Lindsay (text: JEFL10)
- Stuart MacBride (text: STUM10)
For text voting, all codes should be sent to 70070 along with the amount in pounds. So, to donate £10 for Val McDermid, type:
VALM10 £10
and send it to 70070.
There is a generic code for anyone who wants to donate but not vote for a specific author, which is MFAM50.
Only people based in the UK will be able to vote by text but online votes and donations can be taken from around the world.
The 'Million For A Morgue' campaign will allow Professor Black and colleagues in the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification (CAHID) to adopt the revolutionary Thiel method of embalming.
The University has already committed £1 million to the project but another £1million needs to be raised.
Professor Black and other members of the CAHID team featured in the major BBC2 series `History Cold Case’. The CAHID team have developed groundbreaking techniques in areas such as hand identification, which has directly led to the successful prosecution of a number of paedophiles identified from images of their hands found in obscene photographs and films.
The Centre also runs a major training programme in Disaster Victim Identification, which has trained police offers in practical techniques in human identification, enabling them to be deployed to help identify victims of mass fatalities anywhere in the world.
The link-up between the morgue project and the crime writers came about through the long friendship between Val McDermid and Professor Black.
The new morgue will allow Professor Black and her team to adopt the Thiel method of embalming. This gives surgeons, dentists, students and medical researchers a more realistic method of testing techniques, practising procedures and developing new equipment and approaches.
Dundee is the first University in the UK to adopt the Thiel method.
'We will be the first University in the UK to exclusively use Thiel embalming and it is an area where, working together with other colleagues in the University, we can make real breakthroughs and change the face of scientific, medical and dental research and training,' said Professor Black.
For more on the Million For A Morgue campaign see: www.million4amorgue.com.
For media enquiries contact:
Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk
MOBILE: 07800 581902 |
