Cold, Cold Bones: 'Kathy Reichs has written her masterpiece' (Michael Connelly)

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But when mother and daughter meet at Tempe’s place one night for dinner, they find a box on the back porch.

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.The directions lead to a macabre discovery behind a Benedictine monastery—which brings further revelations involving a series of seemingly unconnected violent murders. Cold, Cold Bones is yet another unmissable thriller from Reichs, perfect for both new and longtime readers of this incredibly enduring series. Reichs supplies a great hook, a double helping of homicides past and present, and all the meticulous forensic details and throwaway cliffhanger chapter endings you’d expect from this celebrated series, though the motive behind the murders is significantly less interesting than the ghoulish crimes themselves. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.

From teaching FBI agents how to detect and recover human remains, to separating and identifying commingled body parts in her Montreal lab, as one of only seventy-seven forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, Dr Kathy Reichs has brought her own dramatic work experience to her mesmerising forensic thrillers. Cold, Cold Bones is a thing of clever beauty—smart, scary, complicated, and engrossing from the first sentence.

On page 361, Slidell is allowed to press a suspect who doesn’t have anything to do with the case to coerce a confession out of him. There seems to be no pattern to these killings, except that each mimics a killing connected to something a younger Tempe experienced, or barely escaped.

The cold cases may be stacking up, but for Temperance Brennan, the real target is very close to home.

On page 51, Katy asks her mother if she knows how many people are unhoused in the United States, then informs her there are “over half a million. It seems unfathomable that someone is targetting Tempe as it would mean they’re playing the long game, having patiently waited years for their chance to seek revenge or payback (or whatever motivates them). Instead of the typical single, young character, Tempe is a divorced professional with an adult daughter.

It’s refreshing to follow a protagonist in a thriller who has aged and has an adult daughter who is a big part of her life. Were you able to put together the clues in Cold, Cold Bones to identify the killer in advance of Tempe’s figuring it out? In case you are unfamiliar with Reichs, she is a forensic anthropologist herself – meaning the character of Tempe is about as authentic as it gets.Brennan) is a forensic anthropologist who is enjoying time with her daughter Katy, who just came back from a stint in the army. Although the book is a little unbelievable at times, Kathy Reichs keeps the action flowing throughout the novel.