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Deja Dead

Death du Jour

Deadly Decisions

Fatal Voyage

Grave Secrets

Bare Bones

 

 

 

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Heinemann       

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Deja Dead

 

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Amazon.co.uk Review
Reichs' stunning debut thriller draws on her experience as a forensic anthropologist in North Carolina and Montreal, but it has considerably more going for it than the mere stamp of authenticity. The devil is in the details, and it is the small betraying details--the alignment of cuts in bloody bone--that convince Temperance Brennan that a series of women, murdered in different ways, were killed and dismembered by the same hand and the same saw. Knowing what she knows is one thing, but convincing her police colleagues is quite another.

 

Reichs skillfully depicts police canteen culture and the way it ensures that someone who is an expert outsider, not one of the lads, is always going to have to go that extra mile to prove herself and her ideas. Brennan is a toughie, though, and not too fussy about demarcation disputes. Reichs has found a way of having her cake and eating it and giving us a detective who combines professional expertise with enthusiastic amateurism. Even more compellingly, the suspense is turned up several notches when Brennan realizes that she is hunted as well as hunter--they find the killer's lair and find her photograph among his trophies... --Roz Kaveney

 

Synopsis
When the bones of a woman are discovered in the grounds of an abandoned monastery, Dr Temperance Brennan of the Laboratoire de Medecine Legale in Montreal is convinced that a serial killer is at work. The detective in charge of the case disagrees with her, but he is forced to revise his opinion.

 

 

Death du Jour

 

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Amazon.co.uk Review
After one of the more startling crime debuts of recent years, Déjà Dead, Kathy Reichs has found herself, at a stroke, regarded as a possible contender for Patricia Cornwell's crown as queen of forensic detection novels. As the new book opens, her forensic anthropologist heroine Temperance Brennan is doing what she usually does--helping to identify remains about which there is almost nothing suspicious. In this case she is dealing with a 19th-century nun of vast sanctity, for whose beatification her relics and burial site need authenticating. What could be simpler or less menacing? Almost immediately, Tempe is called in on a bad case: arson, which has left remains so damaged that a normal pathologist cannot cope--and the victims that pathologists normally cope with include infants stabbed to death.

 

Something sinister is going on, and whether in Quebec, where she has her practice, or the sleepy South, where she teaches, Tempe is not safe. Reichs' first book was good on the domesticity and friendship to which Tempe retreats--and this time we meet her younger sister, Harriet, who has just got rid of her balloonist lover and is looking for a new interest. --Roz Kaveney

 

Express on Sunday
‘Better than Patricia Cornwell’

 

Excerpted from Death Du Jour by Kathy Reichs. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved


If the bodies were there, I couldn't find them. Outside, the wind howled. Inside the old church, just the scrape of my trowel and the hum of a portable generator and heater echoed eerily in the huge space. High above, branches scratched against boarded windows, gnarled fingers on plywood blackboards. The group stood behind me, huddled but not touching, fingers curled tightly in pockets. I could hear the shifting from side to side, the lifting of one foot, then the other. Boots made a crunching sound on the frozen ground. No one spoke. The cold had numbed us into silence. I watched a cone of earth disappear through quarter-inch mesh as I spread it gently with my trowel. The granular subsoil had been a pleasant surprise. Given the surface, I had expected permafrost the entire depth of the excavation. The last two weeks had been unseasonably warm in Quebec, however, allowing snow to melt and ground to thaw. Typical Tempe luck. Though the tickle of spring had been blown away by another arctic blast, the mild spell had left the dirt soft and easy to dig. Good. Last night the temperature had dropped to seven degrees Fahrenheit. Not good. While the ground had not refrozen, the air was frigid. My fingers were so cold I could hardly bend them. We were digging our second trench. Still nothing but pebbles and rock fragments in the screen. I didn't anticipate much at this depth, but you could never tell. I'd yet to do an exhumation that had gone as planned. I turned to a man in a black parka and a tuque on his head. He wore leather boots laced to the knee, two pairs of socks rolled over the tops. His face was the color of tomato soup. “Just a few more inches.” I gave a palm-down gesture, like stroking a cat. Slowly. Go slowly. The man nodded, then thrust his long-handled spade into the shallow trench, grunting like Monica Seles on a first serve. “Par pouces!” I yelped, grabbing the shovel. By inches! I repeated the slicing motion I'd been showing him all morning. “We want to take it down in thin layers.” I said it again, in slow, careful French. The man clearly did not share my sentiment. Maybe it was the tediousness of the task, maybe the thought of unearthing the dead. Tomato soup just wanted to be done and gone. “Please, Guy, try again?” said a male voice behind me. “Yes, Father.” Mumbled. Guy resumed, shaking his head, but skimming the soil as I'd shown him, then tossing it into the screen. I shifted my gaze from the black dirt to the pit itself, watching for signs that we were nearing a burial. We'd been at it for hours, and I could sense tension behind me. The nuns' rocking had increased in tempo. I turned to give the group what I hoped was a reassuring look. My lips were so stiff it was hard to tell. Six faces looked back at me, pinched from cold and anxiousness. A small cloud of vapor appeared and dissolved in front of each. Six smiles in my direction. I could sense a lot of praying going on. Ninety minutes later we were five feet down. Like the first, this pit had produced only soil. I was certain I had frostbite in every toe, and Guy was ready to bring in a backhoe. Time to regroup. “Father, I think we need to check the burial records again.” He hesitated a moment. Then, “Yes. Of course. Of course. And we could all use coffee and a sandwich.” The priest started toward a set of wooden doors at the far end of the abandoned church and the nuns followed, heads down, gingerly navigating the lumpy ground. Their white veils spread in identical arcs across the backs of their black wool coats. Penguins. Who'd said that? The Blues Brothers. I turned off the mobile spotlights and fell in step, eyes to the ground, amazed at the fragments of bone embedded in the dirt floor. Great. We'd dug in the one spot in the entire church that didn't contain burials. Father Ménard pushed open one of the doors and, single file, we exited to daylight. Our eyes needed little adjustment. The sky was leaden and seemed to hug the spires and towers of all the buildings in the convent's compound. A raw wind blew off the Laurentians, flapping collars and veils. Our little group bent against the wind and crossed to an adjacent building, gray stone like the church, but smaller. We climbed steps to an ornately carved wooden porch and entered through a side door. Inside, the air was warm and dry, pleasant after the bitter cold. I smelled tea and mothballs and years of fried food. Wordlessly, the women removed their boots, smiled at me one by one, and disappeared through a doorway to the right just as a tiny nun in an enormous ski sweater shuffled into the foyer. Fuzzy brown reindeer leaped across her chest and disappeared beneath her veil. She blinked at me through thick lenses and reached for my parka. I hesitated, afraid its weight would tip her off balance and send her crashing to the tile. She nodded sharply and urged me with upturned fingertips, so I slipped the jacket off, laid it across her arms, and added cap and gloves. She was the oldest woman that I had ever seen still breathing. I followed Father Ménard down a long, poorly lit hallway into a small study. Here the air smelled of old paper and schoolhouse paste. A crucifix loomed over a desk so large I wondered how they'd gotten it through the door. Dark oak paneling rose almost to the ceiling. Statues stared down from the room's upper edge, faces somber as the figure on the crucifix.

 

 

Deadly Decisions

 

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Amazon.co.uk Review
Kathy Reichs' forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan is arguably the best of the current crop of thriller pathologists; her third outing, Deadly Decisions, pits her reconstructive skills against a bunch of Hell's Angels with a taste for ultra-violence. Hardly has she pieced together the jigsaw fragments of identical twins, before she finds herself engaged in identifying the teenage girl whose skull and long bones turned up near the grave of some earlier victims of inter-gang strife. Her sweetheart Ryan is under investigation for corruption; her nephew is sleeping on the sofa and showing an unholy fascination with bikes and bikers; and Tempe is having a series of really bad hair days. In addition to the usual fascinating material about the identification of human bones, Reichs tells us all about the way in which biker gangs have become a serious part of the criminal underworld, a subculture with a taste for mayhem and with rules it is death to break. Tempe is on her usual brittle good form--a woman torn between her cold clinical intelligence and a crusading desire to avenge the helpless that regularly brings her into conflict with more quietly committed colleagues. This is an excellent thriller that combines real intelligence with a radical social anger. --Roz Kaveney

 

 

Synopsis
Temperance, forensic anthropologist for the state of Quebec, is recalled from a course for a gruesome duty. Biker war is raging in Quebec and two of its foot soldiers have blown themselves up. She is the person qualified to make sense of what remains.

 

 

Excerpted from Deadly Decisions by Kathy Reichs. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved


Her name was Emily Anne. She was nine years old, with black ringlets, long lashes, and caramel-colored skin. Her ears were pierced with tiny gold loops. Her forehead was pierced by two slugs from a Cobra 9-mm semiautomatic.

 

It was a Saturday, and I was working by special request of my boss, Pierre LaManche. I’d been at the lab for four hours, sorting badly mangled tissue, when the door to the large autopsy room opened and Sergeant-Detective Luc Claudel came striding in. Claudel and I had worked together in the past, and though he’d come to tolerate, perhaps even appreciate me, one would not infer that from his brusque manner. “Where’s LaManche?” he demanded, glancing at the gurney in front of me, then quickly away. I said nothing. When Claudel was in one of his moods, I ignored him. “Has Dr LaManche arrived?” The detective avoided looking at my greasy gloves. “It’s Saturday, Monsieur Claudel. He doesn’t wo—” At that moment Michel Charbonneau stuck his head into the room. Through the opening I could hear the whir and clank of the electric door at the back of the building. “Le cadavre est arrivé,” Charbonneau told his partner. What cadaver? Why were two homicide detectives at the morgue on a Saturday afternoon? Charbonneau greeted me in English. He was a large man, with spiky hair that resembled a hedgehog’s. “Hey, Doc.” “What’s going on?” I asked, pulling off my gloves and lowering my mask. Claudel answered, his face tense, his eyes cheerless in the harsh fluorescent light. “Dr LaManche will be here shortly. He can explain.” Already sweat glistened on his forehead, and his mouth was compressed into a thin, tight line. Claudel detested autopsies and avoided the morgue as much as possible. Without another word he pulled the door wide and brushed past his partner. Charbonneau watched him walk down the corridor, then turned back to me. “This is hard for him. He has kids.” “Kids?” I felt something cold in my chest. “The Heathens struck this morning. Ever hear of Richard Marcotte?” The name was vaguely familiar. “Maybe you know him as Araignée. Spider.” He curled his fingers like a child doing the waterspout rhyme. “Great guy. And an elected official in the outlaw biker set. Spider is the Vipers sergeant at arms, but he had a real bad day today. When he set out for the gym around eight this morning the Heathens blasted him in a drive-by while his ole lady dove for cover in a lilac bush.” Charbonneau ran a hand backward through his hair, swallowed. I waited. “In the process they also killed a child.” “Oh, God.” My fingers tightened around the gloves. “A little girl. They took her to the Montréal Children’s Hospital, but she didn’t make it. They’re bringing her here now. Marcotte was DOA. He’s out back.” “LaManche is coming in?” Charbonneau nodded.

The five pathologists at the lab take turns being on call. Rarely does it happen, but if an off-hours autopsy or visit to a death scene is deemed necessary, someone is always available. Today that was LaManche. A child. I could feel the familiar surge of emotions and needed to get away. My watch said twelve-forty. I tore off my plastic apron, balled it together with the mask and latex gloves, and threw everything into a biological waste container. Then I washed my hands and rode the elevator to the twelfth floor. I don’t know how long I sat in my office, staring at the St Lawrence and ignoring my carton of yogurt. At one point I thought I heard LaManche’s door, then the swish of the glass security doors that separate portions of our wing. Being a forensic anthropologist, I’ve developed some immunity to violent death. Since the medical examiner turns to me to derive information from the bones of the mutilated, burned, or decomposed, I’ve seen the worst. My workplaces are the morgue and autopsy room, so I know how a corpse looks and smells, how it feels when handled or cut with a scalpel. I’m accustomed to bloody clothing drying on racks, to the sound of a Stryker saw cutting through bone, to the sight of organs floating in numbered specimen jars.

But I have always been unsettled by the sight of dead children. The shaken baby, the battered toddler, the emaciated child of religious zealots, the preteen victim of a violent pedophile. The violation of young innocents has never failed to agitate and distress me. Not long ago I had worked a case involving infants, twin boys killed and mutilated. It had been one of the most difficult encounters of my career, and I didn’t want to reboard that emotional merry-go-round. Then again that case had been a source of satisfaction. When the fanatic responsible was locked up and could order no more executions, I felt a genuine sense of having accomplished something good. I peeled back the cover and stirred the yogurt. Images of those babies hovered in my mind. I remembered my feelings in the morgue that day, the flashbacks to my infant daughter. Dear God, why such insanity? The mutilated men I had left downstairs had also died as a result of the current biker war. Don’t get despondent, Brennan. Get angry. Get coldly, resolutely angry. Then apply your science to help nail the bastards.

 

“Yep,” I agreed with myself aloud. I finished the yogurt, drained my drink, and headed downstairs.

 

 

 

Fatal Voyage

 

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Amazon.co.uk Review
Tempe Brennan, Kathy Reichs' forensic anthropologist heroine, often finds herself in physical jeopardy. In Fatal Voyage, her fourth outing, someone is trying to kill her and also to destroy her professional reputation with trumped-up charges of unethical behaviour.

 

Tempe is called in when a plane full of college athletes goes down in the remoter parts of the forests of North Carolina. She finds herself investigating a spare foot she rescued from coyotes, a foot which is significantly more decomposed than the crash victims and which has symptoms of gout, a disease most of the dead young people had no time to contract. There is a locked house and walled courtyard out in the woods that do not appear on any maps and it seems almost as if her simple knowledge of their being there has offended the powerful of the world.

 

As always, Kathy Reichs manages to combine a detailed knowledge of who the dead were and how they died with a profound sense of the sadness of things.

 

This is a book that never lets us forget amid the dissections and tests for genetic markers that each human death is that of a tragic and irreplaceable human being. Tempe is one of the more attractive of the current crop of women detectives simply because she is flawed and vulnerable as well as smart, righteous and brave. Reichs never lets you forget that crime novels should acquaint us with good people as well as human evil. --Roz Kaveney

 

 

Literary Review
‘Genuinely thrilling’

 

Book Description
The fourth Temperance Brennan thriller from the international no.1 bestselling author.When a plane crashes high in the mountains of North Carolina, Tempe Brennan is one of the first on the scene. As a forensic anthropologist for the state, she serves on the region's disaster response team. The task that confronts her is a sad and sickening one: she and her colleagues must painstakingly identify the victims. A chance discovery concerns her - a severed foot - well away from the main crash site, but close by a deserted house which is buried so deep in the woods that locals claim to know nothing of its existence. Her examination of the foot throws up more questions than it answers, and before she can make any progress, an anonymous accusation is levelled against her. Tempe must fight to save her professional standing. But she fears that, air tragedy aside, another corpse lies somewhere in the woods. Pitting herself against a conspiracy of silence, Tempe is determi! ned to bring justice for her mystery victim… --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

 

 

Synopsis
When a plane crashes high in the mountains of North Carolina, Tempe Brennan is one of the first on the scene. As a forensic anthropologist she serves on the response team. The task that confronts her is a sad and sickening one.

 

 

Excerpted from Fatal Voyage by Kathy Reichs. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
I STARED AT THE WOMAN FLYING THROUGH THE TREES. HER HEAD was forward, chin raised, arms flung backward like the tiny chrome goddess on the hood of a Rolls-Royce. But the tree lady was naked, and her body ended at the waist. Blood-coated leaves and branches imprisoned her lifeless torso. Lowering my eyes, I looked around. Except for the narrow gravel road on which I was parked, there was nothing but dense forest. The trees were mostly pine, the few hardwoods like wreaths marking the death of summer, their foliage every shade of red, orange, and yellow. Though it was hot in Charlotte, at this elevation the early October weather was pleasant. But it would soon grow cool. I took a wind-breaker from the backseat, stood still, and listened. Birdsong. Wind. The scurrying of a small animal. Then, in the distance, one man calling to another. A muffled response. Tying the jacket around my waist, I locked the car and set off toward the voices, my feet swishing through dead leaves and pine needles. Ten yards into the woods I passed a seated figure leaning against a mossy stone, knees flexed to his chest, laptop computer at his side. He was missing both arms, and a small china pitcher protruded from his left temple. On the computer lay a face, teeth laced with orthodontic wiring, one brow pierced by a delicate gold ring. The eyes were open, the pupils dilated, giving the face an expression of alarm. I felt a tremor beneath my tongue, and quickly moved on. Within yards I saw a leg, the foot still bound in its hiking boot. The limb had been torn off at the hip, and I wondered if it belonged to the Rolls-Royce torso. Beyond the leg, two men rested side by side, seat belts fastened, necks mushrooming into red blossoms. One man sat with legs crossed, as if reading a magazine. I picked my way deeper into the forest, now and then hearing disconnected shouts, carried to me at the wind’s whim. Brushing back branches and climbing over rocks and fallen logs, I continued on. Luggage and pieces of metal lay among the trees. Most suitcases had burst, spewing their contents in random patterns. Clothing, curling irons, and electric shavers were jumbled with containers of hand lotion, shampoo, aftershave, and perfume. One small carry-on had disgorged hundreds of pilfered hotel toiletries. The smell of drugstore products and airplane fuel mingled with the scent of pine and mountain air. And from far off, a hint of smoke. I was moving through a steep-walled gully whose thick canopy allowed only mottled sunlight to reach the ground. It was cool in the shadows, but sweat dampened my hairline and glued my clothing to my skin. I caught my foot on a backpack and went hurtling forward, tearing my sleeve on a jagged bough truncated by falling debris. I lay a moment, hands trembling, breath coming in ragged gulps. Though I’d trained myself to hide emotion, I could feel despair rising in me. So much death. Dear God, how many would there be? Closing my eyes, I centered myself mentally, then pushed to my feet. Aeons later, I stepped over a rotting log, circled a stand of rhodo-dendron, and, seeming no closer to the distant voices, stopped to get my bearings. The muted wail of a siren told me the rescue operation was gathering somewhere over a ridge to the east. Way to get directions, Brennan. But there hadn’t been time to ask questions. First responders to airline crashes or other disasters are usually well intentioned, but woe-fully ill-prepared to deal with mass fatalities. I’d been on my way from Charlotte to Knoxville, nearing the state line, when I’d been asked to get to the scene as quickly as possible. Doubling back on I-40, I’d cut south toward Waynesville, then west through Bryson City, a North Carolina hamlet approximately 175 miles west of Charlotte, 50 miles east of Tennessee, and 50 miles north of Georgia. I’d followed county blacktop to the point where state maintenance ended, then proceeded on gravel to a Forest Service road that snaked up the mountain. Though the instructions I’d been given had been accurate, I suspected there was a better route, perhaps a small logging trail that allowed a closer approach to the adjacent valley. I debated returning to the car, decided to press on. Perhaps those already at the site had trekked overland, as I was doing. The Forest Service road had looked like it was going nowhere beyond where I’d left the car. After an exhausting uphill scramble, I grabbed the trunk of a Douglas fir, planted one foot, and heaved myself onto a ridge. Straightening, I stared into the button eyes of Raggedy Ann. The doll was dangling upside down, her dress entangled in the fir’s lower branches. An image of my daughter’s Raggedy flashed to mind, and I reached out. Stop! I lowered my arm, knowing that every item must be mapped and recorded before removal. Only then could someone claim the sad memento. From my position on the ridge I had a clear view of what was probably the main crash site. I could see an engine, half buried in dirt and debris, and what looked like pieces of wing flap. A portion of fuselage lay with the bottom peeled back, like a diagram in an instructional manual for model planes. Through the windows I could see seats, some occupied, most empty. Wreckage and body parts covered the landscape like refuse discarded at a dump. From where I stood, the skin-covered body portions looked starkly pale against the backdrop of forest floor, viscera, and airplane parts. Articles dangled from trees or lay snarled in the leaves and branches. Fabric. Wiring. Sheet metal. Insulation. Molded plastic. The locals had arrived and were securing the site and checking for survivors. Figures searched among the trees, others stretched tape around the perimeter of the debris field. --

 

 

Grave Secrets

 

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Amazon.co.uk Review
Kathy Reichs publishers' comparisons of her with the mega-selling Patricia Cornwell are based on the fact that more and more people (readers, critics, other writers) are calling her better than Cornwell! On the evidence of Reichs' splendid new novel, Grave Secrets the answer is yes--particularly as several recent Cornwell titles have been misfires.

 

Reichs' speciality is the powerfully realised female protagonist: Dr Temperance Brennan is the best of the many forensic specialists rubbing shoulders in the genre at present: she's professional (never, of course, fazed by her often grisly work), forceful in everything but her messy private life. This time, Tempe travels to the Guatemalan village of Chupan Ya tracking the bodies of 23 women and children dumped in a mass grave. But while digging in the pit of death, Tempe finds the present contains further horrors: four girls have gone missing from Guatemala city--and one of them is the daughter of an ambassador. Soon Tempe is up against both a recalcitrant district attorney and municipal corruption, grimly aware that there are those who want the deaths in both the past and the present to remain a mystery.

What makes this such a distinguished addition to the Reichs library (in a class with such winners as Death du Jour) is the brilliantly realised Guatemalan locales. Not many thriller writers can evoke comparison with such masters of foreign climes as Graham Greene, but Reichs pulls it off with aplomb. The web of deceit that Dr Brennan encounters is satisfyingly tangled, and the unravelling of the mystery has all the quirky energy of Reichs at her most stylish. Perhaps future Brennan outings will have to bring in new personal elements for the heroine to avoid staleness, but Grave Secrets has everything in place for the most diverting of reading experiences. --Barry Forshaw 

 

The Independent
'Kathy Reichs is some kind of writer! Deep in Particia Cornwell territory, I think she outdoes the queen of slice 'em and dice 'em fiction... Terrific' 

 

 

Synopsis
Dr. Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist for the medical examiners in Montreal and North Carolina, departs from home turf to journey to Guatemala, where her skills will be tested to the limit. It was a summer morning in 1982 when soldiers entered the village of Chupan Ya and rounded up the women and children. Families and neighbors refer to their lost members as "the disappeared". The bodies are said to lie in a mass grave. Tempe brings all her skill to uncover the savagery of the past. But something savage is happening today. Four girls are missing from Guatemala City, including the daughter of a high-ranking government official. When a young archaeologist is brutally murdered, Tempe realizes that she may be the next victim in a web of intrigue that connects the historical and contemporary murders.

 

 

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Bare Bones

 

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Amazon.co.uk Review

It's a summer of record-breaking heat in Charlotte, North Carolina and Dr Temperance Brennan is looking forward to her first vacation in years. She's almost out the door when the bones start appearing. First there's the newborn skeleton found in a wood stove. Who put the baby there? The mother, hardly more than a child herself, has disappeared. Next, a small plane flies into a rock face on a sunny afternoon. Both pilot and passenger are burned beyond recognition, their bodies covered with a strange black substance. What could it be? What sinister mission might the two have been on? Most puzzling is a cache of bones unearthed in a remote corner of the county. Some animal, some human, the bones are enough to keep Tempe busy for a long time. All the pieces of the mystery seem to lead back to an isolated farm. But what happened there and who will be the next victim? Tempe must find the answers by teasing secrets from the bones - if only she can decipher them in time! A superb new thriller from the number one bestselling author of Grave Secrets.

 

 

Amazon.com

"As I was packaging what remained of the dead baby, the man I would kill was burning pavement north toward Charlotte."

With this opening sentence, Kathy Reichs serves notice that her heroine, Temperance Brennan, is in for one of her scariest, most gruesome adventures yet. As fans of this popular series already know, Tempe is a forensic anthropologist: an expert in the human form (especially bones) who helps solve crimes. The abovementioned infant is only the first in a series of grisly remains, both human and animal, that Tempe must sort through and decode. Meanwhile, as several seemingly unrelated cases begin to intertwine, her sleuthing puts her in the crosshairs of a very nasty stalker who hides behind an e-mail alias.

Reichs knows how to keep the narrative ball rolling with a canny mix of plot developments, character delineation, and scientific detail, all relayed in Tempe's smart, breezy, sarcastic voice. In fact, Bare Bones has a few too many characters and plot lines for Reichs--or most readers--to keep perfect track of. But it's a fun ride anyway, enlivened by some steamy romantic scenes and some fascinating, appalling information about the illicit trade in endangered wildlife (did you know that bears' gall bladders fetch more money per ounce than cocaine?). Bare Bones is a crisp, enjoyable read that cements Kathy Reichs's standing as the best forensic-thriller writer at work today. --Nicholas H. Allison

From Publishers Weekly
Feisty forensic anthropologist Temperance (Tempe) Brennan is supposed to be on vacation, but body parts keep turning up. At the start of her sixth adventure, she's awaiting the arrival of her current flame, Quebecois sleuth Andrew Ryan, so she can head for the beach near her hometown of Charlotte, N.C. Before he shows up, she's called in to use her world-class forensics skills when a local janitor's infant granddaughter is found dead and charred in an oven. Then some strange, decomposing remains (" `Human?' `I'm not sure' ") are discovered by Brennan's dog
during a barbecue at a local lakeside resort. Ryan finally arrives, but Brennan's vacation is indefinitely put on hold when a small plane crashes nearby. Two people are dead, and her expertise is required yet again ("The skull had suffered massive communitive fracturing on impact. The fire had done the rest"). Brennan eventually realizes that all three cases are linked to a drug-smuggling ring that also dabbles in poaching exotic animals. As she pursues her investigations, she is forced to work with "Skinny" Slidell, a redneck cop who rubs her the wrong way, but tension is defused by the presence of Ryan, who gamely gives up his vacation to pitch in. He matches Brennan quip for quip, and Tempe's dog, Boyd, provides extra comic relief. Reichs has built a reputation on cut-to-the-chase writing and swift plotting, and this latest effort delivers everything her fans have come to expect.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
A giant step up from her lackluster Grave Secrets (2002), Reichs' latest puts her right up there with Patricia Cornwell's early Kay Scarpetta mysteries. The similarities are obvious--single woman forensic specialist (Reichs' character is Tempe Brennan, who splits her time between North Carolina and Canada) with a daughter, a romantic interest, a generally repellent but perspicacious detective in the background, and an abundance of gory detail and science fact. This time Tempe is in North Carolina, poking her keen investigative nose into what seems at first to be an alarmingly sprawling mess that includes everything from bear bones to a headless corpse. But unlike in Grave Secrets, Reichs manages to pull mostly everything together here (though not without a quick fix or two), and her character's dedication, intelligence, dry wit, and femininity (her romance with Andrew Ryan, lieutenant-detective of the Surete du Quebec, takes a pleasant leap forward) really shine through. A comeback that's definitely hard to put down. Stephanie Zvirin

Copyright © American Library Association.
 

 

 

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