Product Description

'You have an enemy, Dr Brennan. It is in your interest to learn who placed that call'. A routine case turns sinister when Dr Temperance Brennan is accused of mishandling the autopsy of a missing heiress. Someone has made an incriminating accusation that she missed or concealed crucial evidence. Before Tempe can get to the one man with information, he turns up dead. The heiress isn't the only elderly female to have appeared on Tempe's gurney recently. Back in Montreal, three more women have died, their bodies brutally discarded. Tempe is convinced there's a link between their deaths and that of the heiress. But what - or who - connects them? Tempe struggles with the clues, but nothing adds up. Has she made grave errors or is some unknown foe sabotaging her? It soon becomes frighteningly clear. It's not simply Tempe's career at risk. Her life is at stake too.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #294 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-27
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Temperance Brennan swims to consciousness, queasily aware that her feet are painfully tied to her hands. She finds that she is in an enclosed space, and keeps her fear at bay by remembering what she has been doing recently -- travelling with the body of an heiress to a Chicago morgue. Does this have something to do with her grim predicament? Or is it concerned with a recent phone call, an accusation of abuse of practice in the pathology lab? But the man who could have shed light on this call is dead…

With 206 Bones, we're back in the world of Kathy Reichs' resourceful forensic pathologist Dr Temperance Brennan, and it's territory that crime fiction admirers have come to love.

The relationship between Brennan and her colleague Ryan (with whom she was transporting the dead woman's remains) is as sharply handled as anything in previous Reichs novels, and that's no mean achievement -- the often caustic interaction between Tempe, her friends, relatives and colleagues has been one of the pleasures of the series. Here, the narrative has greater urgency than we’ve seen in some time; Reichs' beleaguered protagonist has to draw together the cases of three murdered women to solve a lethal mystery -- and, what’s more, she has to deal with the possibility of sabotage by a fellow member of her forensic laboratory.

Katy Reichs' debut novel Déjà Dead was as impressive a calling card as any author might aspire to. Reichs' strong-minded heroine was utterly plausible, and her creator subsequently placed her in plots that were as well-engineered as anything in the genre. Needless to say, the unflinching confrontation with the grimmer side of human behavior quickly ensured that Reichs' books were not for the squeamish, but for those with a taste for the strongest variety of crime writing, her books quickly became unmissable. And 206 Bones -- with its dark mysteries involving the bodies of dead women -- is Reichs on top form. -- Barry Forshaw

About the Author
Kathy Reichs is forensic anthropologist for the Offices of the Chief Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, and for the Laboratorie de Sciences Judiciaires et de Medecine Legale for the province of Quebec. She divides her time between Charlotte and Montreal and is a frequent expert witness in criminal trials.

Customer Reviews

A good, but short read.
206 Bones sees Temperance Brennan trying to solve the murders of several elderly women, trying to save her own reputation as well as her own life. The story is mostly set in Montreal, as she uses her skills with bones to find the murderer along with her partner Andrew Ryan. The story was a good quick read, the book not being very long but the story entertaining. You had the opportunity of two whodunits, one the murderer and the other the person trying to sabotage her work. I would have preferred the story to move her relationship with Ryan on further, but maybe she is saving that for another book, and the story to generally of been longer. However really enjoyed the book and waiting for the next one.

Gripping forensic science story
I look forward to the next Kathy Reichs book and have read them all. I've tended to prefer her books to those of Patricia Cornwell: the latter having a more abrasive and cruder style of writing, but I think that Reichs is moving a bit closer in this regard to Cornwell. Reich's is in real life a forensic anthropologist and it shows in the authentic medical and scientific details which add to my enjoyment of her books. The gradual unravelling of how four older women died and the attempt to identify bones immersed in water for decades are the engrossing and powerful central themes of the book. Tempe Brennan's on-off relationship with detective Ryan always adds a bit of light-relief and in this book he's a central character in the final solution to what happened to some of the victims. There is another thread to the book concerning sabotaging of forensic evidence that adds to the complexity and interest but I wouldn't elaborate so not to spoil the surprise that comes near the end of the novel.

I would have given the book five stars but for a strange aspect to the construction of the book: chapters 1, 11, 27, 40 and 41 are typeset in italics. At first I thought it was supposed to be the heroine, Temperance Brennan, having a recurring nightmare and that it is a strange way to start a book as it didn't seem to have any bearing on the following chapters. Then same again at Chapters 11 and 27. The other two italicized chapters (40 and 41) were in the same vein but what I thought was a nightmare turns out to be actually happening. Maybe I'm missing something, but why presage an event that is important as part of the final denouement? Another minus point for me is, yet, again Tempe is abducted and in mortal danger connected with her work. I think the author has over-played that theme.

Quality Read
You can't really go wrong with Kathy Reichs, 206 bones is another quality book, if I had a complaint it would be that the book is somewhat thin, 303pages is something I read in 2-3hours, I would prefer a thicker book :) Maybe the next one from Kathy.