First a confession—this book has divested me of a longstanding belief that the plane achieved in the horizontal between the lower margin of each bony orbit and the upper margin of the external auditory meatus is actually the Frankfort plane and not Frankfurt. Indeed the examiner in my MRCP short cases who drolly insisted I explain what Germany had to do with height measurement only served to perpetuate my unenlightened state. Then along came the authors of this compact book to dissemble the myth. However, it is not for this reason alone that I am grateful it now sits on my desk.

The authors are Canadian and American, and purport that this is a practical manual for geneticists/dysmorphologists or indeed anyone who is involved in the evaluation of children and adults with dysmorphic features. The book is structured by body part …