Book excerpt: This is the first empirical law book to investigate coroners’ recommendations, and the extent of their impact and implementation. Based on an extensive study, the book analyses over 2000 New Zealand Coroners’ recommendations and includes more than 100 interviews and over 40 surveys, as well as Coroner’s Court findings and litigation from Canada, England, Ireland, Australia and Scotland. This timely book is an overdue investigation of the highly debated questions: do coroners’ recommendations save lives and how often are they implemented?