January 15th, 2009
Book Review: Bones to Ashes by Kathy Reichs
My dear husband knows my favourite authors and often buys me two or three books at Christmas. What better present can there be than a book by a favourite author? This book I received last year and I filed it in a bookcase and didn’t find it again until recently. An old skull turns up and Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist, begins to investigate, but starts to wonder if the skull could belong to a friend of hers who went missing when they were young. She is having a tough time in the romance department as Ryan, the man she loves, goes back to his wife but they still have to work together as a string of young girls have gone missing.
Temperance uses her skills and connections to pursue the investigation into the missing girls, whilst she and her sister Harry also try to find background information on their missing childhood friend. There’s an obvious suspect but have they read the clues right? This book transports the reader into a different world and the main characters are realistic and believable.
The author Dr Kathy Reichs is a forensic anthropologist and gives an insight into the science that most of us would never engage with. Her first book, Deja Dead, took her to number 1 in the Sunday Times best sellers list and she was the winner of the Ellis Award in 1997. Bones to Ashes is her tenth book. Sometimes she is compared to Patricia Cornwall but although there are similarities Reichs concentrates on solving the crime and not the torture that the victims suffers, so although there are gruesome parts they are not quite so horrific.
Her eleventh book “Devil Bones” is sitting beside me waiting to be read. I can’t wait.
