She Treads Softly: The Bone Hacker

Tuesday, August 1, 2023

The Bone Hacker

The Bone Hacker by Kathy Reichs
8/1/23; 336 pages
Scribner
Temperance Brennan Series #22

The Bone Hacker by Kathy Reichs is a highly recommended thriller and the 22nd novel in the series featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance (Tempe) Brennan.

For this outing Tempe starts out in Montreal, Canada, but circumstances send her to a tropical setting in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI). In Canada, while examining a young man thought to have been struck by lightning, Tempe notices a an unusual tattoo that she discovers is tied to the islands of Turks and Caicos. Tiersa Musgrove, the police superintendent there, enlists her help to solve the disappearance of male tourists over the years. These cases are ongoing and when new bodies turn up, the potential danger to Tempe also rises.

The writing is entertaining and intelligent, as expected, and Tempe is always a perceptive, strong and resourceful character. She is capable and able to uncover evidence and clues needed to figure out what is going on with her cases. And, while in the investigations of the cases are interesting, there is always danger nearby and it always comes uncomfortably close to Tempe.

As with other books in the series, The Bone Hacker can be read as a stand alone novel. Author Kathy Reichs, much like her fictional character, is a forensic anthropologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, and for the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Quebec. This expertise and insight is brought into every novel she writes.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Scribner via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.