Tags
Bones, Fiction, Forensics, Human Trafficking, Investigation, Murder, Mystery, Reichs
Everyone knows I love mysteries. Everyone knows I’m a bit nerdy. However, you may not know just how nerdy I can be.
If you like TV, you may already be familiar with Kathy Reichs. The popular show BONES is loosely based off a combination of her novels, and her life. She used to be the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina, and she is one of only ninety-nine forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. What this means people, is that she is the person on CSI who gets called in when all that is left of a body is the bones. She can look at the bones and tell you if they golfed, played tennis, prayed a lot, what their ethnicity was, and how much extra weight they carried. Pretty cool, until it get technical anyway.
I began reading Reichs years before a TV show was a tickle in a producer’s brain. She writes mysteries based off of cases she has come across in her work. She often shares a bit about these cases at the end of her books, so you know where her ideas come from. This is something I like a lot.
Although, I love reading her books, many of my friends have found her…boring. Not because the murders and plots themselves are boring, but because as a scientist, she provides a lot of technical detail. She tells you about the bones, the clues, the trace, in detail. Then she explains what they mean and why. I like this, but like I said at the beginning, I’m a nerd.
The 16th novel in the Temperance Brennan series by Reichs is Bones of the Lost. This story was built around human trafficking. Oh, and there are some Peruvian mummified dogs as well, just to explain the dog skeleton on the cover. As always, it kept me engaged. Sometimes what she does with the personal lives of her characters confuses and frustrates me, but her writing improves with each novel. She also gets better at explaining the science stuff in more understandable terms with each novel. If you enjoy the more technical aspects of CSI, NCIS, and BONES, you may get a kick out of reading some Reichs. She isn’t for everyone, but there is a reason she’s a New York Times Bestselling Author.
I enjoy her and hate her at the same time.
I mean really, how does she have her career, raise successful children, write novels, and produce a TV show all at the same time? It makes me feel distinctly like an underachiever. But she can spin a darn good yard, and I like that the stories are inspired by real-life happenings.
If you want to give her a try, start with Deja Dead.
Dust off the Bookshelf 