It's a summer of record-breaking heat in Charlotte and Dr. Temperance Brennan is looking forward to her first vacation in years. She's almost out of the door when the bones start appearing. First there's the little skeleton of a newborn found in a wood stove. Who put her there? The mother hardly more than a child herself has disappeared.

Next, a Cessna plane flies into a rock face on a sunny afternoon. Both pilot and passenger are burned beyond recognition, their bodies covered with a strange blank substance. What could it be? There's evidence that they may have had criminal purposes for the flight.

Most puzzling, though, is a cache of bones found in a remote corner of the country. Some animal, some human, the bones are enough to keep Tempe busy for a long time to come. All the pieces of the mystery seem to lead back to an isolated farm. But what happened there and who will be the next victim/ The answers lie hidden deep within the bones - if only Tempe can decipher them in time...

This is Kathy Reichs's last chance. Her last book was so deeply unsatisfying that I am desperate that she redeem herself here, and not just concentrate on the relationship between Tempe and Ryan, and instead offer a really interesting story. I know she can do it. She is a writer of extremes, either extremely good or extremely bad. Her tendency to use tech talk is annoying, but forgivable if the story is good enough. I really hope that this will be a good one, otherwise it'll be the last I buy.

January 19th 2004
The End

I made a huge mistake reading this book immediately after Black Notice by Patricia Cornwell. I'd been so enthused by the Scarpetta novel that I'd yearned for more of the same...except Kathy Reichs isn't the same, she's not in the same league! Reading the two back to back really brought that into vivid clarity, and definitely depreciated my enjoyment of Bare Bones.

In the time since I read my last Scarpetta book I've read all the Reichs books, and knew that though they were slightly less well written the stories were still good. I'm no longer of that opinion, as this wasn't the worst Reichs book I've read it certainly isn't a rollicking fun fest either.

The story surrounds the discovery of a collection of animal bones near a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Tempe must examine them to rule out human remains...which unfortunately the cache contains. At the same time a former employee's daughter is suspected of murdering her newborn baby, and a plane presumed to be smuggling drugs crashes. Tempe begins to investigate, and finds the three cases link up.

So it's a fairly complex and convoluted story, that isn't particularly absorbing given its bittiness. Include the inevitable romance, which she infuriatingly tries to keep mysterious in the first chunk of the book, and you have on your hands a fairly unsatisfying read. After the Cornwell the stuttering narrative and lack or emotion really stood out. Reiche is clearly trying to copy her style, even down to the characters that mirror Scarpetta's world more closely than I had ever noticed before. In a way I'm glad that I read them together, otherwise the contrast between them (and the similarities) might not have been so stark.

The worst part of this book was that the entire story seemed geared towards one moral lesson delivered by Tempe at the end. That annoys me. When I buy a book it's to be entertained, rather than be force fed the author's morality...if they want to tell me stuff too that's ok, just make sure it's not totally blatant. In this case it was heartbreakingly obvious, to the point of wanting to throw the book at the wall.

I honestly didn't enjoy reading this book, though perhaps I would have if I hadn't just read the infinitely superior Black Notice. Right now I'm not sure if I'll bother buying the next Reichs novel, perhaps, but it won't make the top of my 'to read' pile until the memory of this one has faded.