Review: A Conspiracy of Bones by Kathy Reichs

Temperance Brennan is recovering from neurosurgery and trying to cope with a difficult supervisor when she finds herself mixed up in a case involving mysterious text messages and a corpse that is void of any identifiable features. And while she is keen to discover the identity of the dead man, her investigations will uncover some surprising links to some unresolved cases that involve missing children.

I have a confession to make, this is actually the first Kathy Reichs novel I have ever read. I can recall seeing a few episodes of Bones (the television series that was based on the books,) but even that was some time ago. So unlike the many, many fans of the author and series, I came into this one with very little knowledge of the character and setting. Fortunately, Reichs is the kind of author who gives readers just enough explanation to let them know what is going on without it getting in the way of the story. 

The central mystery--the discovery of a corpse that cannot be identified--intrigued me greatly and I found myself relating it in places to a similar event that happened in Adelaide many years ago, known locally as the Somerton Man (read more here.) I was surprised and (is delighted the right word,) to discover a note at the end of the book from the author in which she disclosed that parts of the plot were indeed inspired by the Somerton Man. 

This is a fast and intelligent ripper of a crime novel and one that had me intrigued enough to want to go back and read the series from the beginning.

Recommended.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Australia for my copy of A Conspiracy of Bones.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more