Nose in a Book

Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs

Spider Bones is the thirteenth Temperance Brennan novel.  You don’t need to read the first twelve to enjoy the book but it helps with some of the characters and back history (although Reichs is pretty good at filling in the gaps).  Anyway, the novel starts out in Canada where a body is pulled from a pond.  When they run the prints they get a hit – to a guy who supposedly died in 1968 in Vietnam and is buried in North Carolina.  This leads Dr. Brennan to North Carolina to exhume the body and then to Hawaii to JPAC (the US military’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, whose mission is to find and identify missing soldiers).  In Hawaii, Brennan becomes involved in a local case and as usual manages to annoy some criminal types who come after her and her family.  Pretty formulaic but not in a bad way.  Of course, Brennan finds a way to invite her on again-off again boyfriend and partner, Andrew Ryan and his daughter to the island as well.

As I said before, these books are pretty formulaic and when I read the first twelve all at once, it got old, fast.  But reading this one a whole year later I actually really enjoyed it.  I couldn’t put it down.  Reichs, at times gets a little technical and her “easy” explanations aren’t that great either.  For example, in this book she explains a DNA sequencing technique that I actually know about and she managed to confuse me.  But most of the time the technical stuff isn’t important to the story and you can just skim over those parts if you’re not interested (or confused).

Overall, I liked this instalment a lot better than some of the previous ones but as I mentioned earlier that could have something to do with reading them all at once.  If you’ve read any crime fiction, it’s just what’s expected and it’s entertaining and educational to boot.

Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs

Read for: RIP Challenge

My mom and my brother has recently convinced me that I was totally missing out by not watching the TV series Bones.  So I borrowed Season 1 and flew through it and I’m not just starting Season 2.  And I agree, I was missing out!  But then I noticed in the credits that it was based on a series of books by Kathy Reichs.  Of course, I had to read them!  The book is really nothing like the TV except for the name of the main character and the fact that they are both forensic anthropologists, but it was equally as good!

For those of you, that have never seen the TV show or read the book, Temperance Brennan is a forensic anthropologist.  Basically, that means that she’s really good at reading bones.  In the book, she works in Montreal with the crime lab.  In Deja Dead, she is brought a set of bones that when analyzed remind her of a set she worked on about a year previously.  Then another body is found and the circumstances around the murder creep Brennan out even more.  She does some digging and finds other possible cases.  She’s convinced that they are dealing with a serial killer.  Unfortunately for her, the detectives on the case disagree and she can’t really take it that much further on her own.

I really liked this book and I will definitely be picking up the rest of the books about Tempe Brennan.  There were a couple of times where I found the book got overly technical and I was totally lost.  It didn’t hamper my understanding of the case or the plot though, but I wondered why it was necessary?  Also, it bothered me that Brennan constantly put herself in dangerous situations without telling anyone where she was going, even after the detectives on the case told her not to do that any more and knowing that the killer was following her.  She never even had a weapon!  Otherwise it was an enjoyable read and I can’t wait to read some more!

By the way, how would you categorize this book?  I’m going with mystery for now but let me know if there’s a better label for it.