I've been an admirer of Kathy Reichs since I read her very first novel, Déjà Dead, almost twenty years ago. Her novels, especially the earlier ones, have given me hours of reading pleasure, and even though the most recent ones have perhaps slightly fallen below that early brilliance, I believe I've read all, or almost all of them. So I was pleased to be invited to join in this current book tour of her latest publication, a collection of four stories featuring, needless to say, Dr Temperence Brennan.
I can't believe you don't already know everything about Kathy Reichs and her novels, but what I find so fascinating about them is that, in addition to being exciting, witty and informative, they are almost always based on Reichs' own experiences as a forensic anthropologist. For Reichs has an impressive career quite apart from novel writing and, like her heroine, divides her working life between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Montreal, Quebec. It's rare to find a writer whose fiction is based so closely on their working life, and it seems remarkably fortunate that she's able to use her work, and her strongly held beliefs, in this way without ever appearing didactic or preachy. In fact I imagine it must be enjoyable to find ways of weaving the fact into the fiction (or is it vice versa?) and I think Kathy Reichs must be a fun person to know, at least if she resembles her wonderful central character.
The thing that first drew me to The Bones Collection is that one of the stories (the final one, in fact) goes back to the very beginnings of Tempe's career in forensic anthropology. Here we see her as a young researcher, working towards her bio-archeology PhD on the examination and assessment of prehistoric bones. She's annoyed to be interrupted by a couple of cops looking for her supervisor, who is far away on sabbatical. But they overcome her unwillingness and persuade her to examine some remains found in a burnt out trailer - it's assumed they must be those of the trailer's owner, but as often happens Tempe's expertise shows that this is a misidentification.Naturally enough she gets hooked by the excitement of working on a police investigation, and the rest is history. It's interesting to meet the young Tempe, who is still married to Pete, her ex in the later stories, and still drinking (quite a lot of red wine), which, as regular readers will know, she doesn't do any more in later life.
Identification is obviously an important aspect of forensic anthropology, and plays an important part in the other three stories in this volume. The first is set in a peculiar artists' colony (that's a peculiar colony, not a colony for peculiar artists) on the shores of a lake in North Carolina, and proves to deal with a shocking case of illegal puppy-farming. In the second, Tempe goes to Florida for a holiday and gets caught up in the analysis of bones that have been recovered from the inside of a Burmese python in the Everglades, and in the third, it's the frozen body of a girl climber which has been recovered from the slopes of Mount Everest.
Each story in the book has an afterword, something Reichs has started to do in her novels too, setting the fiction in the the context of the actual case at its basis, and allowing her to make explicit the sometimes shocking facts that lie behind the story. In 'Bones in her Pocket' she draws attention to the estimated ten thousand 'puppy mills' that exist in the United States, and the fact that many people unknowingly buy their puppies from inhumane breeders. In 'Swamp Bones' it's the growing problem of increasing numbers of pythons breeding in the Everglades, and in 'Bones on Ice' we learn of the extraordinary fact that the slopes of Mount Everest are literally peppered with dead bodies, too frozen to be moved, which the climbers have to navigate past on their trek to the summit. All this is disturbing but important information I certainly didn't have before, and makes what would otherwise be a set of entertaining stories into something rather more serious.
I'm well aware that forensic anthropology, about which you also learn a great deal from Reichs' books, is not everybody's cup of tea. Many people I know would probably be appalled by the detailed descriptions of cutting up dead bodies and subjecting them to various tests to determine their identity and cause of death. Strangely enough, though I'm terribly squeamish in real life, I find I'm fascinated by the scientific detail of the process, especially given the knowledge that it's absolutely accurate in every way.
So, if you're a fan of Reichs you won't need urging to read this latest volume. If you haven't tried her yet, why not dip a toe in the water? I defy you not to fall in love with Tempe, with her great skill, her habit of rushing in to investigate when she's been specifically warned not to, and her wonderfully witty one-liners (she narrates all the stories herself). Great stuff.