BONES TO ASHES
Kathy Reichs
Pocket Books
Thriller
Hardcover: 0743294378
Paperback: 9781416525653

• Read an Excerpt

Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan has just returned to her Montreal office for the summer when a package containing deteriorated bones jolts her back to her childhood. She and her sister and mother had spent several summers on Pawley’s Island in the outer banks of South Carolina where she met Evangeline, an exotic girl of her age. Evangeline and her younger sister spent their summers with an aunt and uncle on the island. They spoke with French accents and had been places that Tempe had only dreamed of. Then one summer, Evangeline and her sister simply vanished. Tempe attempted to discover what happened to them and was told bluntly that it was a bad thing --- something the family could not or would not talk about.

The loss of her playmates continued to haunt her throughout her adult life, and when she saw the location where these bones had been found --- the same area where Evangeline had lived in the Maritime Provinces of Canada --- it reawakened her doubts and concerns.

Tempe’s job normally entails body identification and cause of death in current cases, but occasionally a cold case or an archaeological skeleton will trigger an investigation. She faces a hard sell in convincing the police that these bones, clearly buried for many years --- perhaps decades --- might be those of a crime victim. Their condition suggests that foul play may have been involved, which gives her the authority to enlist the support of Hippo, a Montreal cold case detective, to join Ryan, Tempe’s policeman partner who is trying to locate several missing juvenile girls. Hippo speaks the patois of the Maritimes where Evangeline lived, so he is able to translate and help Tempe discover how this young girl died in an effort to identify the remains.

What Tempe uncovers in her search leads to a discovery not only of a dangerous child pornography ring, but to insight into a long, shameful secret in Canada’s history. With more plot twists and turns than a wilderness hunting trail, BONES TO ASHES leads Tempe and Harry directly into the path of danger as they track down a sociopathic killer.

Kathy Reichs, who in real life is a forensic anthropologist with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a Professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina, presents the story in factual, often-chilling clinical detail. She skillfully weaves the thrill of the hunt into her graphic and sometimes-technical medical descriptions.

BONES TO ASHES is the 10th installment in the Temperance Brennan series, which serves as a basis for the hit television program “Bones.” Reich’s demanding forensic work and writing schedule include producing the show, in which her character comes to life as a forensic anthropologist. The TV version of Tempe has just started writing mysteries, ironically under the pen name “Kathy Reichs.” Reichs’s life is a little like living in a mirrored room where she sees herself reflected as the doctor, the writer and the producer, and now becomes a fictional character starring in her own life. The other main characters from the novels do not, for the most part, carry over into the television series. In the books, Tempe still has feelings for an ex-husband with whom she shares custody of a cat and a bird, and a detective partner and boyfriend, Ryan, whose future as a romantic interest always seems to be in jeopardy.

    --- Reviewed by Roz Shea

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