Review: THE BONE CODE, Kathy Reichs

• 
  this edition published by Simon & Schuster Australia 2021
  
• ISBN 9-781760-858582
• 351 pages
• #20 in the Temperance Brennan series

Synopsis (Publisher)

NUMBER ONE NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author KATHY REICHS returns with her next edge-of-your seat thriller featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A storm has hit South Carolina, dredging up crimes of the past.

On the way to Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan receives a call from the Charleston coroner. During the storm, a medical waste container has washed up on the beach. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting and bound with electrical wire. Chillingly, Tempe recognizes many details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec fifteen years earlier. With a growing sense of foreboding, she flies to Montreal to gather evidence and convince her boss Pierre LaManch to reopen the cold case. She also seeks the advice—and comfort—of her longtime beau Andrew Ryan.

Meanwhile, a storm of a different type gathers force in South Carolina. The citizens of Charleston are struck by a bacterium that, at its worst, can eat human flesh. Thousands panic and test themselves for a rare genetic mutation that may have rendered them vulnerable.

Shockingly, Tempe eventually discovers that not only are the victims in both grisly murder cases related, but that the murders and the disease outbreak also have a common cause…​​

My Take

It is some time since I have read one of this series. THE BONE CODE is set in 2020, acknowledging the presence of the Covid-19 pandemic. However it is not the pandemic that plays a role in this novel but a virus that is killing dogs. Is it possible it can also infect their human owners?

In South Carolina the two bodies washed up in a shipping container remind Tempe of an unsolved cold case in Quebec fifteen years earlier. In a secondary mystery she is trying to track down why the photo of a death mask many decades old looks so familiar.

Tempe calls in a number of favours to help her solve her problems, and eventually tracks down the reason for the similarity between the two sets of bodies separated, in discovery, by 15 years.

I did feel at a distinct disadvantage from having read so few of this series. For me, the book worked relatively well as a stand-alone.

My rating: 4.4

I've also read

CROSS BONES - #8
4.1, MORTAL REMAINS  -#13 AKA SPIDER BONES

Review: MORTAL REMAINS, Kathy Reichs - audio

Published 2010
#13 in the Temperance Brennan series
Audio version released on Audible.com 2010
This edition (Abridged) narrated by Linda Emond 
Length: 6 hrs 20 mins
Source: won at CrimeFest 2011

Publisher's Blurb:

When Tempe is called to the scene of an autoerotic death, she has little idea of the tangled chain of events that will follow. Because the man whose body she is examines apparently died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam 40 years before. So who is buried in the soldier's grave?

Tempe's investigations take her to Honolulu, where she is caught up not only in the mystery of the unidentified body in the soldier's grave, but also dragged into investigating who, or what, killed the young men whose body parts have floated up onto a popular Hawaiian beach.

And as Tempe gradually unravels the tangled threads of the mystery, it becomes clear that there are some who would rather the past stays dead and buried. And when Tempe proves difficult to frighten, they turn their attention to the person who means more to her than anyone else in the world.

My take:

Kathy Reichs' work has a considerable following, increased by the fact that her titles are the basis of the popular television series Bones.

The forensic and medical detail that makes the Bones series popular is probably the aspect that I liked least about MORTAL REMAINS, and at times felt overwhelming and a little too graphic. Underneath is a good story line: the victim of a helicopter crash in Vietnam in 1968 is buried with military honours in his hometown in North Carolina. Four decades later Tempe Brennan is called to a drowning in Quebec. The fingerprints say this victim is the man who died in Vietnam. When Brennan goes to Honolulu to solve this puzzle, she learns that this is not the only ID mixup caused by inadequate forensic procedures in the 1960s.

As you will have noticed, this audio book was an abridged version. So I am not sure what was left out. I'm not sure either why it was abridged. The "full length" recording is barely 2 hours longer. The abridged version of MORTAL REMAINS was shortlisted for a Crime Fest 2011 audio award.

MORTAL REMAINS is #13 in the Temperance Brennan series and I can really only be said to have dabbled in the series. Although it appears that each book can stand on its own, there are obviously continuing threads, particularly in personal relationships between Dr. Temperance Brennan and other characters - lovers, her daughter, colleagues - that will add more meaning.

My rating: 4.1

Reviews of other titles by Kathy Reichs on this blog:
CROSS BONES

Mini-review BREAK NO BONES, rated at 4.3
Dr Temperance Brennan is filling a vacancy as a supervisor of an archaeology dig for students from the University of North Carolina. The dig site on Dewees Island on contains sixteen prehistoric graves, a pre-Colombian burial ground. Dewees Island is largely a conservation easement, but the rest is ripe for development. On the penultimate day of the dig, just when they are well on the way to wrapping everything up on schedule, Tempe has a couple of visitors: local freelance journalist Homer Winborne, and Dickie Dupree, land developer and entrepreneur. As if on cue, an intrusive articulated skeleton is discovered in one of the graves. Tempe quickly realises that this body is not prehistoric.

Kathy Reichs' website

Temperance Brennan makes ‘Top 10 female detectives’ The Guardian newspaper has named Temperance Brennan one of their top 10 female detectives. This puts Temperance alongside such classics as Nancy Drew and Miss Marple. The Guardian says of Temperance that she is “spiky and socially awkward… brilliant at everything except interacting with other humans.” See Guardian article

Crime Fiction Alphabet: CROSS BONES, Kathy Reichs

This post is for the Crime Fiction Alphabet Community Meme.- letter C

Arrow Books, Random House Australia, April 2006

Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan is called in as a consultant to the post-mortem of a middle-aged orthodox Jew found shot dead in Montreal. Tempe sees her job as restoring the identity that death has erased. In this case the mutilated body was found in a cupboard with some very hungry cats. Tempe must decide whether it is possible for the man to have committed suicide. At the mortuary a man, who appears to be one of those assigned by the local synagogue to observe the post-mortem, hands Tempe an envelope containing a photograph of an ancient skeleton. He assures her that the photograph holds the key to understanding this death. The mystery that unravels leads Tempe to Israel, to Masada and Jerusalem, and right to the beginnings of the Christian era.

In CROSS BONES it is easy to get caught up in the action of the investigation that Tempe and Ryan carry out in Jerusalem. The reader only sees events through Tempe's eyes, which can be a little frustrating at times as other characters pursue other lines of enquiry. In the long run, I don't think Reichs managed to make the connection between the death in Montreal and the anthropological investigation in Israel as solid as she would have liked to. Nevertheless, the result is fast-paced, very readable, and contains excellent elements of suspense.

CROSS BONES is the ninth in Kathy Reich's Temperance Brennan series but is a departure from her usual focus. As Reichs herself says, most Temperance Brennan novels spring from a mixture of her real forensic cases, in her real-life role as a forensic anthropologist working in North Carolina and Quebec. This story began with an opportunity presented to her by Dr. James Tabor who carried out investigative research on Masada and is soon to publish a non-fiction book on the Jesus Dynasty. This story may be also be enjoyed by those whose imagination has been tickled by recent publications related to the search for the Holy Grail. It felt to me as if Reichs wanted to put forward some of her own ideas on the issues that are linked to that debate.

The novel opens with a prologue that provides several pages about the ossaries found in Masada and Jerusalem, implying that information about these finds has not publicly been released, and giving carbon 14 dating as first century AD, and names that seem to link the remains to Jesus and his family. There is no doubt that this novel is very firmly based in research. There is a clever melding of historical and technical detail, and over a year's worth of research by Reichs herself, in this fictional story that features Tempe Brennan and her lover, detective Andrew Ryan.

Kathy Reichs has her own website.

My rating 4.3

This review was first published on Murder and Mayhem, May 2006

Crime Fiction top sellers in Oz

The crime fiction best sellers listed on Angus and Robertson currently are

VODKA DOESN"T FREEZE by Leah Giarratano.
What a coup for Leah, as an Australian author, to be right at the top of the list!

My mini review last year, giving it a rating of 4.2.
Newly promoted Detective Sergeant Jill Jackson of the New South Wales Police force based in Sydney has a deep hatred of paedophiles and the “squirrels” who procure children for them. When Jill was twelve years old she was abducted and held in a basement for 3 days during which time she was abused by men who were never caught. After the kidnapping Jill experienced considerable trauma including a phase of self-mutilation. Even now over twenty years later she has recurrent nightmares, and unpredictable panic attacks. She is very security conscious and has also developed techniques for dealing with unwanted memories. Exhaustive exercise is one of her strategies. Jill’s colleague Scotty Hutchinson is as committed as Jill to hunting down paedophiles. David Carter, paedophile and voyeur, is killed in the sand dunes when he is watching a young couple. There have been two other bashing deaths with similar MOs in the Sydney metropolitan area. Jill and Scotty believe there are connections, perhaps even a serial killer who is hunting down paedophiles.

BONES TO ASHES by Kathy Reichs.
I haven't read this one yet, so here is the blurb from the website. It is a Tempe Brennan book.

The skeleton is that of a young girl, no more than fourteen years old - and forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan is struggling to keep her emotions in check. Coroner Yves Bradette is being evasive, insisting the bones are ancient and of no interest. But it doesn't quite add up, and a frustrated Tempe is convinced that Bradette is hiding something. It's not Tempe's case; she's overwhelmed with more urgent work in the lab. But the nagging in her subconscious won't let up. A memory triggered, deep in her hindbrain - the disappearance of a childhood friend; no warning, no explanation. Working on instinct, Tempe takes matters into her own hands. But she couldn't have predicted where this case would lead, or the horrors it would eventually uncover.Can Tempe maintain a professional distance as the past catches up with her in this, her most deeply personal case yet?

THE WIRE IN THE BLOOD by Val McDermid.
I recently reviewed BENEATH THE BLEEDING and gave it 5.0.
THE WIRE IN THE BLOOD is actually #2 in the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series, published in 1997, and I'm pretty sure I have read it, but my database of mini-reviews only goes back 4 years.
Strangely the A&R site doesn't have a synopsis of the story, so here is the one from Fantastic Fiction.
Taut, suspenseful and ferociously readable thriller featuring psychological profiler Dr Tony Hill. 'A terrific chiller from Manchester's answer to Thomas Harris' Guardian Nobody moves around inside the messy heads of serial killers like Dr Tony Hill. Now heading up the recently founded National Profiling Task Force, he sets his team an exercise: they are given the details of thirty missing teenagers and asked to use their new techniques to discover whether there is a sinister link between any of the cases. Only one officer, Shaz Bowman, comes up with a concrete theory, but it is ridiculed by the rest of the group until someone murders and mutilates one of their number. Could Bowman's outrageous suspicion possibly be true? For Tony Hill, the murder of a member of his team becomes a matter for personal revenge. Aided by his previous colleague, Carol Jordan, he embarks upon a campaign of psychological terrorism -- a game of cat and mouse where the roles of hunter and hunted are all too easily reversed.

BURNT HOUSE by Faye Kellerman.

I haven't read this one either, so again, the synspsis from Fantastic Fiction.
At 8:15 in the morning, a small commuter plane carrying forty-seven passengers crashes into an apartment building in Granada Hills, California. Shock waves ripple through Los Angeles, as L.A.P.D. Lieutenant Peter Decker works overtime to calm rampant fears of a 9/11-type terror attack. But a grisly mystery lives inside the plane's charred and twisted wreckage: the unidentified bodies of four extra travelers. And there is no sign of an airline employee who was supposedly on the catastrophic flight.

Decker and his wife, Rina, have personal reasons for being profoundly shaken by the tragedy, since the "accident" occurred frighteningly close to their daughter Hannah's school. Luckily, their child and her schoolmates escaped unscathed. But the fate of the unaccounted-for flight attendant—twenty-eight-year-old Roseanne Dresden—remains a question mark more than a month after the horrific event, when the young woman's irate stepfather calls, insisting that she was never onboard the doomed plane. Instead, he claims, she was most likely murdered by her abusive, unfaithful husband. But why, then, was Roseanne's name included on the passenger list?

Under intense pressure from the department to come up with answers, Decker launches an investigation that carries him down a path of tragic history, dangerous secrets, and deadly lies—and leads him to the corpse of a three-decades-missing murder victim. And as the jagged pieces slowly fall into place, a frightening picture begins to form: a mind-searing portrait of unimaginable evil that will challenge Decker's and Rina's own beliefs about guilt and innocence and justice.

CLEAN CUT by Lynda La Plante.
I read this last year and gave it 4.6
Here is my mini review.
The sequel to THE RED DAHLIA. In the intervening time DI Anna Travis and DCI James Langton have become lovers. They no longer work together and endeavour to keep their working and private lives separate. When Langton is horrifically injured in a murder arrest that goes wrong, Anna becomes vital to his recovery. While Langton is still in hospital, Anna is assigned to a new case where a librarian is found dead by her twelve year old daughter returning from school. The suspect in this case is yet another violent rapist released from prison far too early. And then, perhaps a little predictably, the case Anna is working on and the one Langton was working on when he was attacked become linked. This a long and complex novel, with an ending that ensures there will be yet another sequel.

CLEAN CUT IS #3 in the Anna Travis series, and My advice would be to try to read them in order.
1. Above Suspicion (2004)
2. The Red Dahlia (2006)
3. Clean Cut (2007)

Books to Look For

Every now and again I check Australian online sites for what they are listing in crime fiction and I've found a couple I haven't yet got hold of.

Over at Angus and Robertson Australia, they list the Top 5 Bestsellers for Crime Fiction. Not sure what the time frame for this list is, perhaps the last week ??

The books listed are

TRIPTYCH by Karin Slaughter. When I reviewed TRIPTYCH in 2006 I gave it 4.6

THE HARD WAY by Lee Child. My review of THE HARD WAY was also favourable with a rating of 4.7

BREAK NO BONES by Kathy Reichs. I wasn't as impressed with BREAK NO BONES, but perhaps I was feeling a bit over-Reiched. I gave it 4.3

END IN TEARS by Ruth Rendell
This one didn't make it to being a published review but here is what I said in my database:
In the early hours of the morning George Marshalson is waiting anxiously for his young daughter to come home. His discovery of her body at dawn not far from the house is the beginning of a new case for Reg Wexford and the Kingsmarkham CID team. Neither Reg nor his assistant Mike Burden are getting any younger and both are a bit old-fashioned in their attitudes and their policing methods. In this, the 20th book in the Wexford series that began in 1964, award winning author Ruth Rendell introduces the new face of policing in Britain in the persons of the latest additions to the team, Bal and Hannah. And again Rendell gives this book a contemporary setting by weaving into it a theme that has been of world-wide community concern. The Wexford family interest continues too when daughter Sylvia becomes pregnant by her ex-husband.
My rating: 4.8

THE POWER OF THE DOG by Don Winslow
I read a blurb about this one but it didn't grab me.

Over at Dymocks Australia, it is not so easy to find a similar list but the author of the month has been Alexander McCall-Smith with the book THE GOOD HUSBAND OF ZEBRA DRIVE listed.
I loved this one and gave it 5.0. My database entry:
#8 in the No. 1 LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY series. After I read the previous title in this series, I thought perhaps it was coming to an end; that McCall Smith had no more to tell, could do no more with the material. How wrong I was! With THE GOOD HUSBAND OF ZEBRA DRIVE the series swings upward to another peak. Maters come to a point between that traditionally built lady Precious Ramotswe and her secretary Mma Makutsi when the latter takes the afternoon off to do some shopping when she is supposed to be minding the office. Mma Makutsi decides to resign and to look for a new job. Meanwhile, when Mma Makutsi was absent, Precious Ramotswe’s husband, Mr. J L. B. Matekoni interviewed a client, and he tells his wife he would like to follow that case through, carrying out the investigation himself. A cousin working in the administration of the public hospital in Mochudi comes to see Precious Ramotswe about some unexplained deaths at the hospital, so once again the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency has its hands full. There is something about reading these stories that is rather like meeting up with old friends. But don’t underestimate McCall Smith as a writer. The characters are gently but so graphically drawn, with touches of humour, and situations you can imagine witnessing. And McCall Smith makes use of an urban legend that I’m sure you’ll recognise. There’s no sex, no violence, rarely any blood and gore in these novels. And yet there is murder, mystery and crime, just enough to challenge the reader’s little grey cells.

Dymocks are highlighting THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson which I have heard good things about but still haven't read. (and they've cut $6 off the price of the trade paperback too)
From their site:
Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared off the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family. There was no corpse, no witnesses, no evidence. But her uncle, Henrik, is convinced that she was murdered by someone in her own family - the deeply dysfunctional Vanger clan. Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomqvist is hired to investigate, but when he links Harriet's disappearance to a string of gruesome murders from forty years ago, he needs a competent assistant and he gets one: computer hacker Lisbeth Salander - a tattooed, truculent, angry girl who rides a motorbike like a Hell's Angel and handles makeshift weapons with the skill born of remorseless rage.This unlikely pair form a fragile bond as they delve into the sinister past of this island-bound, tightly-knit family. But the Vangers are a secretive lot and Mikael and Lisbeth are about to find out just how far they're prepared to go to protect themselves and each other

Lotsa Bones

Yesterday we had body parts. Today I've scoured my recent database entries for skeletons.
There are some treats among these books, and some of my favourite authors.

ENTOMBED by Linda Fairstein
Workers demolishing a nineteenth-century brownstone where Edgar Allan Poe once lived discover a human skeleton entombed -- standing -- behind a brick wall. When sex crimes prosecutor Alexandra Cooper hears about the case, it strikes her as a classic Poe scene...except that forensic evidence shows that this young woman died within the last twenty-five years. Meanwhile, Alex's old nemesis the Silk Stocking Rapist is once again terrorizing Manhattan's Upper East Side. The attacks soon escalate to murder, and the search leads Alex and detectives Mercer Wallace and Mike Chapman to the city's stunning Bronx Botanical Gardens. There, an enigmatic librarian presides over the Raven Society, a group devoted to the work of Poe.
This was an engrossing read. There's a lot of detail about Poe (and who knows if it is correct) but certainly we have all read some Poe at some time. I can believe too the claim made in the book that Poe was the originator of the detective novel. . There were parts of the novel which were very Poe-ish in their macabre-ness and suspense. At the same time it moves at a smart pace and there are lots of little weblike links binding it all together.
I didn't find this as dark as some of the earlier Fairstein's that I have read. There's some interesting comments too on how modern technology that can help track a culprit down - DNA of course, but Metro transport tickets??
My rating: 5.0

THE FUNERAL BOAT by Kate Ellis
The Tradmouth area of Devonshire is the location this Kate Ellis’ police procedural in which Wesley Peterson, a young black detective plays a prominent role. Wesley and his superior, Inspector Gerry Heffernan, had both chosen a rural setting in which to pursue their law enforcement careers, thinking criminal activity would be considerably less than in London. However, of late, things are anything but peaceful on their turf. A rash of burglaries targeting isolated farms in the district, the disappearance of a young Danish tourist, and the discovery of a skeleton who had met his death apparently violently are keeping Heffernan and his staff busy round the clock.
My rating: 4.5

BREAK NO BONES by Kathy Reichs
Dr Temperance Brennan is filling a vacancy as a supervisor of an archaeology dig for students from the University of North Carolina. The dig site on Dewees Island on contains sixteen prehistoric graves, a pre-Colombian burial ground. Dewees Island is largely a conservation easement, but the rest is ripe for development. On the penultimate day of the dig, just when they are well on the way to wrapping everything up on schedule, Tempe has a couple of visitors: local freelance journalist Homer Winborne, and Dickie Dupree, land developer and entrepreneur. As if on cue, an intrusive articulated skeleton is discovered in one of the graves. Tempe quickly realises that this body is not prehistoric.
My rating: 4.3

SPIDER TRAP by Barry Maitland
Spider Roach, his very name a combination of the insect pests that we all hate, is the perfect illustration of the adage that evil breeds evil. Back in the 1980s he controlled the hotbed of gangster land around Cockpit Lane. Now an old man, 20 years on he still controls it - his 3 sons are evil and always have been, and they seem to have married and begotten evil too. Brock had dealings with Roach back in the 1980s and he emerges from retirement in SPIDER TRAP to warn Brock off from his current investigation into the spider's web of evil he has built up over the decades. Two young girls have been found shot dead in Cockpit Lane, a boy is electrocuted as he tries to cross the electrified rail line to get to the nearby waste land where "brown bread" is rumoured to be hidden, and then the police begin to dig up 20 year old skeletons buried in the waste ground. #10 in the Brock and Kolla series
My rating: 4.7

MURDER IN THE MUSEUM - A Fethering Mystery by Simon Brett
Bracketts, once the home of poet Esmund Chadleigh, is an Elizabethan house, now a museum devoted to the remembrance of Chadleigh. Carole Seddon, retired public servant, becomes a trustee on the board of Bracketts, but board meetings are complicated by the discovery of a skeleton in the kitchen garden. Carole and her neighbour Jude become involved when there is a shooting in the house car park. Obviously Bracketts has secrets some one is keen to keep hidden. I am an addict of Simon Brett's writing.
My rating: 4.5

SILENCE OF THE GRAVE by Arnaldur Indridason
Building work on the outskirts of Reykajavik (Iceland) uncovers a body possibly buried alive during World War Two. Erlendur and his team are called in to investigate and try to uncover the truth while a team of archaeologists slowly and painstaking exhume the skeleton. Those who still live in the area tell of a young pregnant woman who disappeared in the war, but is it her? An elderly dying man talks of the green woman who was crooked. At the same time Erlendur is re-living his past - his daughter Eva Lind lies in a coma in the local hospital after a miscarriage and an old woman asks him why he is carrying a young boy around with him. The construction of this novel is intricate and it is almost impossible to solve the mysteries until the very end. Indridason draws into it a fascinating local legend about an orgy at the local gasworks on the night Halley's comet nearly struck the earth in 1910. Translated into English from Icelandic in 2005.
My rating: 5

THE DRAINING LAKE by Arnaldur Indridason
After an earth tremor, the water level in an Icelandic lake begins to drop as water drains out through fissures in the lakes bed. Eventually it drops low enough to reveal the skeleton of a murder victim, probably there for a number of years and anchored to a piece of Russian radio equipment. The search for the identity of this person is a fairly lengthy and tedious process but murders and missing persons are pretty rare in Iceland where everybody knows everybody. Woven into the murder investigation is the story of idealistic young Icelandic socialists, party members chosen to be educated at university in Leipzig in East Germany, and then also more about Erlendur's own family and his children who flit in and out of his life. Originally published in Icelandic in 2004, the 4th of Indridason's books to be translated into English.
My rating: 4.7

THE BONE GARDEN by Tess Gerritsen
Maura Isles, Boston medical examiner, tells Julia Hamill that the skeleton she has dug up in her back garden is old, much older than the house that she has recently purchased. The skeleton is that of a female under 35 years, buried perhaps more than 150 ago, and murdered. Julia is recently divorced and had been labouring to convert the barren back yard into a garden when her shovel struck a skull. Now her backyard is an excavation site for the medical examiner’s office.
For most of the book, which jumps, sometimes a little jarringly, backwards and forwards between the 1830s and the present day, we are following an ancestor of the last owner of the house, the person's whose estate Julia bought the house from. We do this both through reading about events as they happen, and through papers and letters hoarded by the previous occupant Hilda Chamblet
My rating: 4.6