Monday 19 April 2021

✪ The Bone Code (Temperance Brennan #20) ✪ Kathy Reichs ✪

 

   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…​​ 

 

 Copy received from Simon and Schuster Australia for an honest review 

It has been a while since I have picked up a Temperance Brennan book, however I found myself able to pick right back up where I had left off.

I love the procedural side of  The Bone Code, the past combining with the present cases. I love Tempe's perseverance in cracking the case - even 15 years down the track.

I am also still shipping Tempe and Andy Ryan's romance all these years down the track.

And I did like that that book is set in 2021, and that it does deal with COVID-19 and the post pandemic state of the world.

However, the thing that didn't sit quite right with me was the bacterium threat storyline - not that that is something that couldn't happen, but that the author chose to use a vaccine as the way to spread said bacterium.  In this day when people are still on the fence about getting the COVID-19 vaccine, this just felt tone deaf and that the author did not read the room on that one.

One other thing that caught me was some of the conversations with another major character in this book, a police officer. I even said to myself "Oh heck no, she did not just ask that?!?!?" It was quite cringeworthy.

So whilst overall I enjoyed The Bone Code, there were a couple of things that were just a bit hinky to this reader.

I do look forward to more Brennan books in the future.


   

 

 


Kathy Reichs’s first novel Déjà Dead, published in 1997, won the Ellis Award for Best First Novel and was an international bestseller. The Bone Code is Kathy’s twentieth entry in her series featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Kathy was also a producer of Fox Television’s longest running scripted drama, Bones, which is based on her work and her novels. One of very few forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, Kathy divides her time between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Montreal, Québec. Visit her at KathyReichs.com or follow her on Twitter @KathyReichs. 


Photograph by Marie-Reine Mattera, from the Simon & Schuster Australia website