Kathy Reichs Cross Bones

What a load of American upper class pompus rubbish. Weak story line, trying to imitate Dan Brown. Very annoying main characters. Not true to life what so ever.

Anyone who enjoys the TV series "Bones" will be sadly disappointed. One of the few times I have actually thought a TV programme was far far superior to a book.

Tempe is obviously Kathy Reichs alter ego and her self opinion must be in outer space.

I will not be reading any more of KR's novels, only so I do not have to see her smug self satisfied face on the inside cover.

Cross Bones

Kathy Reichs

Scribner, June 2005, $25.00, 366 pp.

ISBN 0743233484

At Quebec's Central Crime and Medical Lab, forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan is assigned to work on the case of Orthodox Jew Avram Ferris. The on-site investigators thought he committed suicide but Tempe, an expert at skeletal anatomy, comes to the conclusion that he was murdered. When she steps out of the autopsy room a man stops her and gives her a picture saying this was the reason Ferris was killed.

When she sends the picture to her colleague, biblical archaeologist Jake Drum, he becomes very excited and believes that the intact skeleton is that of a man who lived in the first century. Jake traces the skeleton from a monastery to a museum to Ferris wanting to sell it on the black market. Tempe, her lover detective Andrew Ryan and Jake end up in Israel where they hope to identify the bones that were in the picture that were found in Cave 221 in Masada. A tooth that doesn't belong to the skeleton is traced to a tomb in the Kidron Valley where it is thought is the resting place of Jesus and his family. The closer they get to the answer, the more danger Tempe finds herself in.

Kathy Reichs writes as well as Patricia Cornwall and her storylines are just as exciting, complex and innovative. CROSS BONES takes the heroine out of her milieu and places her in Israel keeping the series fresh and interesting. The heroine is a brilliant and strong willed woman who is determined to get the answers she seeks even if it means putting herself in dangerous situations. Readers who love fast paced action packed thrillers will definitely want to read the book.

Harriet Klausner