So said Mark Antony at Caesar’s funeral. But although no one wants to speak ill of the evil dead, the effects of their lives linger forever. These eight stories explore those lingering aftereffects.

• In Medieval Catalunya, evil persists on the walls of long-abandoned churches in murals where demons torture saints and martyrs. (Vist the link above to see wonderful Romanesque frescoes.)

• In Colonial Virginia, native Powhatan bones preserve the tale of genocide. (Visit Historic Jamestown at the link above.)

• In Post-World War II Chicago, a P.I. finds evil interred with his mother’s bones, then deduces how the weak are punished for the crimes of the powerful. (Read Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse for a look at the modern Cook County Criminal Courthouse.)

• In the 1990s, a young woman decides there’s no benefit in being more sinned against than sinning. ("Barbie" thinks she knows how to commit the perfect crime. For a real forensic psychologist's view of perfect crimes, see the I.D. channel's "Most Evil.")

• Suitably at the end of this collection, a maid at a resort hotel at the foot of Mount Powhatan uncovers bad memories in the sheets and pillowcases she changes each day—but it’s nothing compared to the evil that stalks the foothills of her Serbo-Croatian homeland. (To learn what really happened to the innocents in Bosnia, read The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist's Search for Truth in the Mass Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo .)

Three of these stories previously appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and one in ezine Handheld Crime. One story was scheduled for publication in two different periodicals that went out of business before it was published. One was developed and previewed at www.zoetrope.com.