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Random House Australia, July 2006
Reviewed by Kerrie Smith
Dr Temperance Brennan is filling a vacancy as a supervisor of an
archaeology dig for university students. A pre-Colombian burial ground,
the dig site on Dewees Island contains sixteen prehistoric graves. Dewees
Island is largely a conservation easement north of Charleston, 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
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. In the subsequent post-mortem she discovers
this skeleton has some strange features, and the hunt begins to match this
body with local missing person reports.
As with all the other books in this popular series, this latest Temperance
Brennan novel draws on decades of involvement by author Kathy Reichs at
crime labs and crime scenes. Reichs says BREAK NO BONES is "a bit of a
departure" from her usual modus operandi in that she has drawn from
not just one or two cases, but a range of both personal and professional
experiences. It seemed to me that I found out much more about Tempe's
personal life, too. In order to get to the archaeological dig more easily,
Tempe is staying in a beach house owned by a friend. She is joined by her
estranged lawyer husband, the adulterous Pete, investigating the
disappearance of a local woman. Life becomes complicated when her lover
Detective Andrew Ryan also turns up. A further human element is added when
Tempe discovers that her good friend Emma, Charleston County Coroner, is
seriously ill.
In BREAK NO BONES, as in other books in the Bones series, there is
plenty of forensic and medical detail. Reichs is always meticulous in her
descriptions. I find Temperance Brennan a rather abrasive and formidable
character, whose outspoken approach and impulsiveness initiate plenty of
action. Tempe never lets the fact that she is an outsider prevent her from
saying what is on her mind or doing what she thinks must be done.
In
'real life' Kathy Reichs is a practising forensic anthropologist working
both in North Carolina and Quebec. Her
own work is closely parallelled in that done by her protagonist Dr.
Temperance Brennan. Reichs began the Temperance Brennan series in 1997
with the immediately acclaimed DEJA DEAD and has added to the series at
the rate of almost a book a year. BREAK NO BONES is the tenth in
the series.
Reichs has her own website at
http://www.kathyreichs.com/welcome.htm . You can read the first
chapter of BREAK NO BONES online at
http://www.kathyreichs.com/breaknobones2.htm .
August 2006 review, originally published on Murder and Mayhem
Revised
review March 2007
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