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: #6237 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

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.'

Customer Reviews

Good, but not Reichs' best
Kathy Reichs is one of my favourite writers, and Tempe Brennan, one of my favourite characters. As always, Reichs confidently grounds us in the setting, steering us through Guatemala and Montreal as though we are actually there and she is pointing out the sights, sounds, and smells as we go. There is the usual grisly description of the dead, and the accompanying forensic information that goes with that. Reichs excels in describing in plain English the details of potentially complicated and confusing subjects, but I think in this novel, more than her four previous in the series, she relies too heavily on facts and figures to fill the pages, which tends to slow down the action. Although, having said that, cliffhangers at the end of every chapter kept me turning the pages.

It would have been nice to catch up with some characters from the previous novels (Tempe somehow has close friends we've never heard of in every book, while she rarely associates with any from the ones that came before), but as the the love interest, Detective Ryan, seems to be getting more annoying each time I see him, maybe that's actually a good thing.

Overall, a good book, and an enjoyable read, but not quite in the same league as Deja Dead or Death Du Jour.

Dead And Buried
This, the fifth Tempe Brennan novel, is another excellent addition to the series which has blasted Kathy Reichs to fame.

This time, Tempe is sent to Guatemala to recover the bodies of the dead, massacred during the countries vile civil war. The people known in Guatemala as "the disappeareds". It is in the village of Chupan Ya that she uncovers 28 dead bodies, and on the way to the site, two other forensic scientists are attacked on the road, shot, and left for dead. It is the beginning of an investigation which will haunt Tempe in the coming weeks.

Shortly after, her help is saught by the local police. Four teenage girls have gone missing in Guatemala City, and one of them is the daughter of the Canadian Ambasador. Is there a serial killer at work? Soon after, a decomposing body is found in a septic tank of a local hotel, and the investigating begins in earnest.

Reichs' writing is sharp, the plotting tight and complex. Her characters are well drawn with a few choice words, and her descriptions of the dead are brilliant. Reichs' books really ring with authenticity, as she has been and done exactly the same sorts of things as her main character. This fuels the writing with realism, and a relentless compassion for the dead, which really comes out in the writing. She never lets you forget that these people walked, breathed, laughed, talked...that they used to be us.

Her forensic's are interesting, and the way she writes about them doesn't make you feel as if you're reading a textbook. (In this area, she is almost on a par with Cornwell.) However, with this book there is possibly one too many plot-strands, as they become intertwined in the mind of the reader, sometimes leading to confusion. However, careful reading does remedy this.

Guatemala is described well, and the evil of the civil war events still broods over the landscape.

Tempe's relationship with Ryan develops, and complicates, with this book, when she also finds herself attracted to a Guatemalan police officer, who once knew Ryan. Tempe's conflict is done well, and only serves to bolster the roundness of her character. Being a devout Cornwell fan (i even liked Isle of Dogs) it is hard for me to say, but Tempe is a more realistic, well drawn, likeable character.

The tense and atmospheric conclusion inside a morgue is chilling, and brings the book to a satusfying close. While this book is not quite as good as last year's offering "Fatal Voyage" it is still first class.

Very good and very page turning, but still something missing
After a few pages in, this turns into a real page turner due to the mysteries presented. Tempe has the case for which she is contracted in Guatemala, and another drops into her lap while she is there. A little mystery surrounds the former (with an element of "it gets personal") but the latter is the more personal case due to a Canadian involvement. This even brings old Ryan to Guatemala, and a reunion with an old friend, over whom Tempe has been having a flush or two. Hence the media reviews of confusion and tension, for relationships that are as hot as a freezer defrosting flood in your kitchen.

The pages turn because you want answers to the well presented mysteries. However the resolution is somewhat disappointing. Perhaps this is why I am always left feeling that there is something missing in Kathy Reichs's books. On this occasion note:
the plot carries the possibility of many surprises to make it stun - unfortunately there are no surprises;
the "will she won't she" get into bed with Ryan, or anyone else come to that matter, has the passion, longing and sex drive of a squashed rabbit.

I will no doubt buy the next book as soon as it's out. I have expectations. Reichs's writing improves no end. It is an extremely smooth and gripping transition from one scene to the next. However, it suffered (although did not detract) in just too many one/two/three word lines of the internal ponderings of Tempe. If Tempe keeps on pondering in ths way, she'll turn into the satirical Jennifer Saunders version of Amanda Burton's character in "Silent Witness" on the BBC.

The plotting would benefit from some unexpected twists taking us to places we couldn't possibly have imagined we'd go.

This sounds hard, I know. I enjoyed the book and couldn't put it down. But the ending was a disappointment. And the "crackles" of excellent north American thriller writing were not quite there enough!