Nigel Starck has read a lot of obituaries. His doctoral thesis was on the obituary and newspaper practice, and he teaches obituary composition in South Australia. This book, though, rarely rises above the commonplace. I suspect it is written as a text for students; the final chapter is ‘How to Write Obituaries’. Even students would find the content fairly undemanding. A chapter telling us that those who have their obituaries published are the famous, those who did famous things, those who associated with the famous, national heroes, villains and eccentrics is not rocket science.