Devil Bones (Temperance Brennan Series #11) » (Abridged)

Kathy Reichs burst onto the fiction scene in the late 1990s with her first novel, Déjà Dead, a thriller rooted in an expert knowledge of science and medicine and powered by a strong female protagonist, Temperance Brennan. Since then, Reichs has been a regular feature on bestseller lists and is often mentioned in the same breath as the chief of the autopsy whodunit, Patricia Cornwell.

In a house under renovation, a plumber uncovers a cellar no one knew about, and makes a rather grisly discovery -- a decapitated chicken, animal bones, and cauldrons containing beads, feathers, and other relics of religious ceremonies. In the center of the shrine is the skull of a teenage girl. Meanwhile, on a nearby lakeshore, the headless body of a teenage boy is found by a man walking his dog.

Led by a preacher turned politician, citizen vigilantes blame devil worshippers and Wiccans and begin a witch hunt, intent on seeking revenge. Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan -- "five-five, feisty, and forty-plus" -- is called in to investigate, and a complex and gripping tale unfolds in this deadly mix of voodoo, Santería, and devil worship.

With a popular series on Fox -- now in its third season and in full syndication -- Kathy Reichs has established herself as the dominant talent in forensic mystery writing. Devil Bones, her eleventh taut, always surprising,...

Publishers Weekly

Linda Emond's crisp and dry vocal interpretation of Reichs's Temperance Brennan, crime fiction's second most popular forensic expert, is on target. The cool approach works fine when the "5'5", feisty and 40-plus" heroine describes stumbling into a dark basement and finding a witches' brew of pagan artifacts and human and animal remains. It lets Temperance and the listener calmly contemplate her jumbled, alcohol-prone, romantically impaired life. And it helps in sorting out the clues for several gruesome killings that may or may not be connected and may or may not involve what one character describes as a "murderous devil conspiracy." But even Emond can't make Reichs's endless side trips into North Carolina history, geographical key notes and descriptions of the roots of voodoo and the Wicca religion sound anything but academic. Spare us the lectures; there's more than enough plot without the unnecessary digressions. A Scribner hardcover (Reviews, June 9). (Sept.)

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