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A review by weaselweader
Cross Bones by Kathy Reichs
2.0
“The idea of Mary as a mama is a mega-problem for the Vatican”
The routine examination of a corpse in the Montreal murder of an orthodox Jewish man leads forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan to Israel where she becomes involved with a centuries old mystery that may undercut the basic beliefs of the world’s monotheistic Abrahamic religions. And Brennan knows that nobody will be thanking her for solving the mystery and disclosing to the world what religion would prefer to remain something that must be taken on faith!
A medical thriller based on biblical mysteries and the possibility of the scientific world crossing swords with the Vatican held promise but, sadly, CROSS BONES ended up as a waste of several hours’ reading time that can never be recovered. Reichs’ staccato writing style is irritating in the extreme. Temperance Brennan, as a scientist – a forensic anthropologist, to be more exact – is portrayed as playing a serious detective and is allowed to poke her nose into dangerous and risky circumstances where she simply does not belong. No rational reader could fail to wonder what Reichs was thinking when she had her character wandering down these ridiculous trails! The ending of the novel came like a road in a heavy fog that drove straight off the end of the cliff! At this point, Reichs had obviously decided the novel’s word count was high enough and she wanted to move on to something else. In general, the plot is a non-linear hot mess that is all but impossible to unwind and decipher.
The only saving grace that rescued CROSS BONES from an ignominious one-star trashing was the occasional sidebar essay on matters medical and scientific that was a welcome break from the tedium of the plot-line – DNA polymorphisms; current research on the possible use of genes to predict certain physical traits such as eye or skin colour; differences between mitochondrial and nuclear DNA; and so on.
There are many fine novels in the Temperance Brennan series. CROSS BONES, #8 in a body of work that now extends to twenty novels, is not one of them. If you’re sufficiently NON-obsessive-compulsive that the thought of leaving a title out in your reading doesn’t give you the shivers, I highly recommend you pass this one by.
Paul Weiss
The routine examination of a corpse in the Montreal murder of an orthodox Jewish man leads forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan to Israel where she becomes involved with a centuries old mystery that may undercut the basic beliefs of the world’s monotheistic Abrahamic religions. And Brennan knows that nobody will be thanking her for solving the mystery and disclosing to the world what religion would prefer to remain something that must be taken on faith!
A medical thriller based on biblical mysteries and the possibility of the scientific world crossing swords with the Vatican held promise but, sadly, CROSS BONES ended up as a waste of several hours’ reading time that can never be recovered. Reichs’ staccato writing style is irritating in the extreme. Temperance Brennan, as a scientist – a forensic anthropologist, to be more exact – is portrayed as playing a serious detective and is allowed to poke her nose into dangerous and risky circumstances where she simply does not belong. No rational reader could fail to wonder what Reichs was thinking when she had her character wandering down these ridiculous trails! The ending of the novel came like a road in a heavy fog that drove straight off the end of the cliff! At this point, Reichs had obviously decided the novel’s word count was high enough and she wanted to move on to something else. In general, the plot is a non-linear hot mess that is all but impossible to unwind and decipher.
The only saving grace that rescued CROSS BONES from an ignominious one-star trashing was the occasional sidebar essay on matters medical and scientific that was a welcome break from the tedium of the plot-line – DNA polymorphisms; current research on the possible use of genes to predict certain physical traits such as eye or skin colour; differences between mitochondrial and nuclear DNA; and so on.
There are many fine novels in the Temperance Brennan series. CROSS BONES, #8 in a body of work that now extends to twenty novels, is not one of them. If you’re sufficiently NON-obsessive-compulsive that the thought of leaving a title out in your reading doesn’t give you the shivers, I highly recommend you pass this one by.
Paul Weiss