Dr.Kathy Reichs is a world-class forensic anthropologist as well as being the author of some 14 crime fiction thrillers featuring Dr.Temperance Brennan who is a highly rated forensic anthropologist. She is known to her friends and colleagues as Tempe and she is one smart operator.Just for the record, and this is from early on in this latest book, the difference between pathologists and forensic anthropologists is quote ” pathologists work with freshly dead or relatively intact corpses to determine identity and post-mortem interval. Anthropologists answer the same questions when the flesh is degraded or gone and the skeleton is the only game left”.
Kathy Reichs says that each of her books is based loosely on some case that she has worked on, or some experience that she’s had. She says she takes the core idea then spins off into “what if”. So she keeps her stories fresh and authentic because they originate from her actually being enmeshed and engaged in forensic work on a regular basis. I could also add that as a result the stories are quite grisly in places, not for the squeamish really.
Her last 6 or 7 books have included the word bones in the title for obvious reasons and also I guess because Bones is the name of the popular TV series based on her books.
In this new book Dr. Temperance Brennan is back in North Carolina and investigating the remains of a body discovered in a landfill near the Charlotte Speedway track. Charlotte is Tempe Brennan’s hometown. It is Kathy Rech’s hometown too I might add. The discovery of the remains, found packed in asphalt in a metal drum, restarts a long-dead investigation into the disappearance years earlier of Cindi Gamble then a high school senior and aspiring racer, and her boyfriend, Cale Lovette. Lovette kept company with a group of right-wing extremists known as the Patriot Posse. Could the body be Cindi’s? Or Cale’s?
They were both heavily involved with the NASCAR racing series and much of the action in this book takes place in and around speedway tracks. Before Dr. Brennan can really discover anything about the body in the drum the FBI confiscate the body and destroy it which pits one law enforcement agency against another.
Like all of her books this one is full of complicated characters and greatly detailed stories. Some of the characters appear in earlier titles but she introduces a new one, Galimore, a former cop, and I have the feeling that he may return in future titles. She does have something of a frustrating love life with her on again off again relationship with Detective Andrew Ryan but I’m picking this may change with the introduction of former cop Cotton Galimore to whom she is clearly attracted.
The story takes place over the course of race week in Charlotte and much of it hinges around the nearly 15 year old mystery of the young couple who disappeared. But there is also much about NASCAR and car racing in the book. Reichs said that Prior to writing Flash and Bones, she only had passing knowledge of auto racing, having attended one event many years before. But it seems almost every Charlottean knows a player in the game--be it a team owner, a mechanic, a sponsor, or a driver. The author says “it's hard not to get caught up in the excitement each May and October when hundreds of thousands converge on our burg for big races. Like Daytona or Darlington, Charlotte is an epicenter for the sport”.
In the course of her research for the book Reichs met track owners and managers, sports journalists, pit crew chiefs, and fans who had driven their Winnebagos from Portland, Houston, Teaneck, and Nashville.
So its a rattling good crime thriller, chilling in parts, harrowing in others, with quite a lot about the car racing scene thrown in which I guess will be added interest for many, especially the petrol heads out there.
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