3.57 AVERAGE


I have read the previous 18 books in the series (as well as the author's Young Adult books written with Brendan Reichs ) and I've always really enjoyed them. Not so much the TV series though.

Tempe is back, but not in the lab, and that took some getting used to. It took me a while to get into the story and its numerous (side) plots.

I also found Tempe in this book annoyingly over the top, arrogant, with her feeling of superiority over others. She felt, to me, more like the TV Tempe than the Book Tempe, and I was surprised at that. I even felt sorry for Detective "Grumpy" Slidell, who, I thought, has mellowed quite a bit!

I also thought there were a few loose ends and unexplained events.

@faneproductions have an online event next week with the author, who will be discussing her new Tempe book. Though this read was OK, I'm still looking forward to the event and also to reading The Bone Code.

A Conspiracy of Bones is the 19th book in Kathy Reichs' Temperence Brennan series and it's an amazing read. Appropriate for the ardent fan and the newbie, be prepared to be swept into a maelstrom of stress and tension.

Tempe's life, and head is full of grey. Her mother is having chemo and insists on telling Tempe the details of her love life. Her daughter is still on active duty. Her sister is off on shenanigans. She has committed to living with her lover and is terrified. Her professional life is imploding as she grieves for her dead boss and is hated by the current lab boss, who she has clashed with before. She has been having disabling migraines that are neuological nightmares before the fact that she has an unexploded aneurism in her brain is taken into account.

A renowned forensic anthropologist, she is nevertheless taken back to receive autopsy photos of a man currently in the morgue. Although she offers her services once again , the highly unprofessional Chief Medical Examiner not only refuses her services but does the job inadequately herself, following up with a media interview where she incorrectly identifies the body as Asian.

Believing that her professional life is on the line, Tempe begins her own rogue investigation. But what is real and what is her own brain tripping her up? And is she really personally at risk? And, more to the point, can she find the missing children she and Slidell have been agonising over?

Reichs did such a good job of ramping up Tempe's anxiety and passing it on to the reader at the beginning of this book that I actually had to put it down and walk away from it for a while. Props to her for great writing. On the other hand I did find that the existential angst and paranoia got in the way of the story after a while. Of all her books I found this the most patchy in tempo (although I'm marking against extremely high quality). This is not my favourite but is still very, very good.

Temperance Brennan is distracted. She has a vessel in her brain that is threatening to end her life, she and Ryan are living in both Quebec and Charlotte, NC, her Mama has rebounded with chemo treatments and is engaged, her boss in North Carolina was murdered and her new boss hates her, and someone sent her pics of a very dead, and very faceless, person. Her new boss wants nothing to do with Dr. Brennan and her expertise but in true Temp fashion - she can't let it go. So she convinces Slidell, now a P.I., to join her in trying to identify this faceless man and the search for his identity leads to discovering just what kind of damage conspiracy theories can cause.

I had a hard time following this one on my first read of it so I read it twice because I thought I had missed something in my first read through it. Turns out I didn't. I just had a hard time with this one. I suspect it is because Reichs was a little off her game as she took some time off between books 18 and 19. It felt to me like it was just long enough for her to lose the momentum she had created with Brennan, Ryan, et al. She explains in an afterword why she took time off, and it's understandable but I think it disrupted her personal momentum with the characters. I liked this title okay, but it was convoluted. It was kind of like a magic trick - it drew your attention one way while the action was actually in the opposite direction. And when it all came to a head it kind of just...fizzled. From this reader's perspective, there were a lot of build-ups that led to nowhere.

Deuxième roman de Kathy Reichs et devrait être mon dernier pour un moment. Très bon roman, juste pas ma tasse de thé
adventurous dark informative mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Don’t love that a major incident happened in a novella before this book, but then when I went back to the novella it was so brief it just seemed like she wrote it because she forgot to in the main books. I felt like I was missing something and even went back to reread the last part of book 18 didn’t help. It started me off frustrated with the book and then it didn’t really improve much from there.
challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

'Twas my 1st read of the written Bones aka Temperance Brennan series, and it wasn't bad but it also didn't thrill me. It seemed rather predictable and mundane, discriptive in too many irrelevant spots and not enough in other areas that left questions hanging to possibly never be answered. Was hoping this might be a wonderful new (to me) well of reading and liked that the characters stand in their own book-world that is seemingly quite different than the TV show-world; however this plot and the story lines left me rather underwhelmed and very not enticed to read another. Still might see if my local library has the 1st in the series handy and give it a shot...besides that is one of the many reasons libraries exist and should always live.

Good one. My first by this author but a good mystery to occupy the mind during self-isolation.