Like all great essayists, Thomas Lynch can take an incident and make it manifold, like the world seen in a drop of water. Here he speaks about what it means to hide the bodies of mobsters, regular folks and soldiers. Lynch lives in Milford, Michigan, near the site where the FBI are looking for the body of Jimmy Hoffa. Hoffa was an American labour leader with ties to the Mafia. He disappeared in 1975.

If you have real audio or windows media, you can listen to Digging for Hidden Bodies in Michigan on NPR (the excellent National Public Radio in the US).
As Irish readers will know, Lynch is also an esteemed poet, who keeps a hospitable house he inherited from his cousin Nora in Co Clare.