Product Description

Dr Bill Brockton is hard at work on a troubling new case. A young man's battered body has been found in nearby Chattanooga, and it's up to the talented Dr Brockton to assemble pieces of the forensic puzzle. Brockton is brought into the case by the rising star of the state's medical examiners, Jess Carter. Just as they are on the verge of breaking the case open, events take a terrifying turn. Brockton has recreated the Chattanooga death scene at the Body Farm, but a killer tampers with it in a shocking way: placing another corpse at the setting, putting Brockton's career and life in jeopardy. Soon Brockton himself is accused of the horrific new crime and the once beloved professor becomes an outcast. As the net around him tightens, Brockton must use all his forensic skills to prove his own innocence...before he ends up behind bars with some of the very killers he's helped to convict.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #84629 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
Nearly everything known about the science of human decomposition comes from one place - forensic anthropologist William Bass' Body Farm - CNN. Razor sharp...Fans of forensic fiction will want to add this author to their list of favourites - Booklist. Brims with terrific forensic detail...the real deal - Kathy Reichs.

Booklist
Razor sharp...Fans of forensic fiction will want to add this author to their list of favourites

From the Back Cover
"...time, bacteria and bugs - especially the bugs - do the messy work of separating flesh and bone...".
A male corpse, dressed in fishnet stockings, stiletto heels, a blonde wig and wearing make-up, is trussed up and tied to a tree. At the University of Tennessee's Anthropology Facility, more familiarly known as the Body Farm, Dr Bill Brockton is replicating a recent murder scene.
Returning to his experiment some days later, Brockton walks into a living nightmare. The corpse in drag has gone, and tied to the tree in its place is the body of one of his closest friends. Not only that, someone is going to great lengths to implicate him in their death.
Suspected of murder and shunned by his former colleagues, Brockton must prove his innocence - as long as he can stay alive long enough.

Customer Reviews

Maggots, blowflies and red herrings
This is the follow up to the novel Carved in Bone by the team of William M. Bass, a U.S. forensic anthropologist, and journalist Jon Jefferson. Like the first book, this one is heavy on the good, gooey stuff like decomposition and blowflies, not forgetting maggot trails of volatile fatty acids, and the obligatory boiling of the skull to get a good look at blunt trauma.

Also like the first book, the story-telling isn't very high up on the literary scale, but manages to adequately get the point across. The protagonist, Dr. Bill Brockton, is still the goofy, romantically challenged nerd of book one, but this time he takes a running jump at romance (misses by a mile), and manages to solidly plant both feet in his mouth by giving a rather one-sided lecture on the subject of evolution vs. intelligent design, thereby effectively alienating a large portion of the community and dropping large red herrings all over the plot.

The main part of the story involves the discovery of the body of a pedophile dressed provocatively in drag, and also rather creatively arranged to send a clear message against deviant behavior. This is compounded and complicated by another murder which literally lands in the lap of the investigation, and for which Brockton finds himself a suspect and persona non grata.

Two great characters (Art and Miss Georgia) and an unlikely legal alliance help to spice up a story that takes a few wrong turns but ultimately gets where it's going. Recommended for CSI buffs and people interested in reading stories from the Body Farm.


Amanda Richards

ALL IS NOT AS IT SEEMS...
Once again, the dynamic writing duo of Dr. Bill Bass, forensic anthropologist and founder of the real life University of Tennessee Body Farm, and journalist Jon Jefferson team up for another Body Farm mystery, writing under the pseudonym of Jefferson Bass. This is a series to which I am quickly becoming addicted. The science of anthropological forensics is a fascinating discipline, and those who enjoy reading about its application in the solving of mysteries will certainly enjoy these body farm novels and their central character, Dr. Bill Brockton, who is the head of the Anthropology Research Facility of the University of Tennessee, commonly referred to as the Body farm.

In this second novel, Dr. Brockton not only tries to solve an anthropological mystery, he finds himself at the heart of a mystery. When Dr, Brockton is requested by medical examiner Jess Carter to assist her and shed some light on a forensic puzzle by re-creating a specific death scene at the Body Farm, he finds his relationship with Dr. Carter evolving into one beyond that of colleague.

Dr. Brockton, however, finds his life begins careening out of control when he, as a scientist, affronted by the idea of intelligent design, a euphemism for creationism, discusses the concept in his class, affronting one of his students, whose belief in creationism causes the student to take legal action. Finding himself at the vortex of a public spectacle, Dr. Brockton finds his professional life crumbling around him.

Then, the unimaginable happens. Accused of a heinous crime that he did not commit and finding that all the forensic evidence points to him, his personal life spirals out of control. With the evidence mounting against Dr. Brockton, and many of his friends and colleagues looking at him askance, it appears that the only one who can save him from the unthinkable is himself.

While the plot strains credulity, the book is, nonetheless, an absorbing read, sustained by the forensic detail and the innate charm and likeability of its central character. I certainly look forward to reading the next Body Farm novel.

Flesh and Bones
I looked forward to reading this as I enjoy murders and CSI. Much easier to read and understand than Kathy Reichs and kept me reading to the point that I didn't want to lay it down. Cant wait to read the next two. I give this book 4 stars.