Product Description

Guatemala, in the searing heat. The bones of a child no more than two years old are uncovered when mass graves are excavated. Twenty-three women and children are said to lie where forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan is searching for remains, in what is one of the most heartbreaking cases of her career. Then four young girls go missing from Guatemala City...And when a skeleton is found in a septic tank at the back of a run down hotel, only someone with Tempe's expertise can deduce who the victim was and how they died. But her path is blocked: it appears that some people would prefer that Guatemala's 'dsappeared' stayed buried. And others seem to want the missing girls kept the same way...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2988 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Kathy Reichs publishers' comparisons of her with the mega-selling Patricia Cornwell are based on the fact that more and more people (readers, critics, other writers) are calling her better than Cornwell! On the evidence of Reichs' splendid new novel, Grave Secrets the answer is yes--particularly as several recent Cornwell titles have been misfires.

Reichs' speciality is the powerfully realised female protagonist: Dr Temperance Brennan is the best of the many forensic specialists rubbing shoulders in the genre at present: she's professional (never, of course, fazed by her often grisly work), forceful in everything but her messy private life. This time, Tempe travels to the Guatemalan village of Chupan Ya tracking the bodies of 23 women and children dumped in a mass grave. But while digging in the pit of death, Tempe finds the present contains further horrors: four girls have gone missing from Guatemala city--and one of them is the daughter of an ambassador. Soon Tempe is up against both a recalcitrant district attorney and municipal corruption, grimly aware that there are those who want the deaths in both the past and the present to remain a mystery.

What makes this such a distinguished addition to the Reichs library (in a class with such winners as Death du Jour) is the brilliantly realised Guatemalan locales. Not many thriller writers can evoke comparison with such masters of foreign climes as Graham Greene, but Reichs pulls it off with aplomb. The web of deceit that Dr Brennan encounters is satisfyingly tangled, and the unravelling of the mystery has all the quirky energy of Reichs at her most stylish. Perhaps future Brennan outings will have to bring in new personal elements for the heroine to avoid staleness, but Grave Secrets has everything in place for the most diverting of reading experiences. --Barry Forshaw

Review
'Compared with Patricia Cornwell, Reichs is actually in a different league' Sunday Times

Dr Temperance Brennan is a forensic archaeologist working in Guatemala on the graves of victims of past military regimes. Her important work is interrupted by a local investigation into the disappearance of four young girls, but as she is reluctantly dragged into this new mire, another archaeologist is murdered and she realizes that she may be next. Brennan is a fine central character, expert but vulnerable, clued up but unsure of herself with a new colleague whom she can't help finding attractive. Reichs's writing is of the spare procedural variety familiar to fans of the genre, pacey and eager to let the reader paint in the details while she gets on with outlining the next move. The wider characterization is less accomplished - Guatemalans seem largely made up of simple peasant folk (good, but with a tendency to be victims) and corrupt officials (bad, murderous and on the make). But there's a couple of good, honest, sexy, cops both in Quebec (Brennan's home patch) and Guatemala who threaten to skew her judgement. Reichs's fans (of whom there are many) will love this novel. (Kirkus UK)

The Times, July 13, 2002
'...GRAVE SECRETS is a serious and chilling book that is several cuts above most crime fiction. Reichs has proved that she is now up with the best.'