DEVIL BONES
Kathy Reichs
Pocket Star
Thriller
Hardcover: 9780743294386
Paperback: 9781416525660
When forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is paged during a deadly boring seminar to respond to a call from the county coroner’s office, she’s grateful for the interruption. A contractor, remodeling an older home in Charlotte, North Carolina’s historical district, uncovers a trap door concealing a hidden room. Not an unusual find in houses that date back to the Civil War era, but this one hides a grisly discovery. A strong odor of recently dead flesh --- what appears to be a human skull, cauldrons, ritualistic artifacts and candles --- is evidence even to a lay person that something unsavory is going on. If she had known where this event would lead in her professional and personal life, she might have preferred the mundane meetings and lecture halls of academia.
As Tempe determines that the human skull found in the hidden room is that of a young black female, the headless body of a teenage boy is found floating in a bayou nearby with satanic symbols carved into his chest. Puzzled by the symbols found in the hidden room and on the boy’s body, she contacts practitioners of the mystic arts who point out the differences among wicca, Santaria, voodoo and devil worshipping --- and none of these are consistent with what she finds at the house. Nothing seems to fit. Are these the acts of a cult or a cover-up of crimes of another kind?
An ambitious freelance reporter always seems to be in the right place at the right time to capture pictures and fan the flames of the possibility that a satanic cult is murdering Charlotte’s young people. It is up to Tempe and Detective “Skinny” Slidell to get to the bottom of the rumors and quell the hysterical news reports. An ambitious candidate for public office, radical evangelist Boyce Lingo is all too eager to cash in on the publicity and capitalizes on the sensational events on the evening news and in local newspapers. Tempe’s frustration with the wild-eyed publicity nearly costs her her job as the paparazzi capture her on camera.
Tempe’s concern is first and foremost to identify the unnamed victims whose bones and DNA will lead to notifying their families and, if a crime is involved, bringing the criminals to justice. When a sheriff’s department detective is murdered while investigating the killings and one of the suspects ends up dead, Tempe and Detective Slidell have a mounting panic on their hands. They find themselves embroiled in investigating a male prostitution ring, political corruption, computer gaming and religious persecution.
Tempe’s private life is also in turmoil when her estranged husband, Ryan, returns to his ex-wife. Tempe’s daughter, determined to straighten out her domestic problems, introduces her to a handsome attorney in the public defender’s office where she is interning, who turns out to be a schoolmate Tempe knew in high school. Now handsome and widowed, Charlie Hunt comes into her life just as she’s deciding whether to move on or continue haunting her voicemail for a message from Ryan.
Kathy Reichs is a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina and a forensic anthropologist for the province of Quebec, Canada. She brings the authenticity demanded by savvy readers and television viewers who can almost recount scientific terms and methods by rote due to the rise in numbers of Crime Scene Investigation novels, television series and movies in recent years. Reichs, not coincidentally, is in part responsible for the popularity of this genre because she also created and continues to provide scripts and story ideas for the television series “Bones,” featuring her character, Tempe Brennan, now entering its fourth season on FOX.
DEVIL BONES blends forensics, dizzying plot twists and cliffhanger writing into yet another thriller from a proven master.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
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