Kathy Reichs - Page 1
Hardback
Heinemann
(2005) |
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Cross Bones
‘Death by self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head’ is the on-scene assessment, but the victim’s relatives are adamant in their rejection of suicide as an explanation.
Discovered in a closet, a full week after death, the body is barely recognisable. Extreme heat has accelerated decomposition, and Dr Temperance Brennan’s forensic expertise is required.
Advanced putrefaction has made it virtually impossible to determine the trajectory of the bullet. But just as Tempe is attempting to make sense of the fracture patterning, au unknown man slips her a photograph of a skeleton, telling her it holds the answer to the victim’s death...
Detective Andrew Ryan is also on the case and, as his relationship with Tempe heats up, together they follow the trail of cities all the way to Israel. In the Holy Land, with the help of Jacob Drum, a biblical archaeologist and old friend, Tempe becomes involved in an international mystery as old as Jesus - a mystery that could rewrite 2000 years of religious history.
Could one of the tombs really be Christ’s last resting place? And are the bones in the ancient ossuary the last remnants of James, the brother of Jesus, as its inscription claims? But the further Tempe probes into the identity of the ancient skeleton, the more she seems to be putting herself in danger…
Praise for Kathy Reichs
‘It’s becoming apparent that Reichs is not just ‘a good as’ Cornwell she has become the finer writer’ Daily Express
`The forensic detail is harrowing, the pace relentless and the prose assured. Kathy Reichs just gets better and better and is now the Alpha female of the genre’ Irish Independent
`The science is fascinating, and every minute in the morgue with Tempe is golden’ Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
'Inevitably compared with Patricia Cornwell, Reichs is actually in a different league' Joan Smith, Sunday Times
‘Kathy Reichs is some kind of writer! Deep in Patricia Cornwell territory, she outdoes the queen of slice ‘em and dice ‘em fiction… Terrific’ Mark Timlin, Independent on Sunday
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First British Edition Heinemann (2004) |
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Monday Mourning
Tempe Brennan has come to Montreal from Charlotte in early December to testify as an expert witness at a trial. As Forensic Anthropologist for the province of Quebec, that's part of her job. She should be going over her notes, but she's freezing her behind off instead, digging in the basement of a pizza parlour. Not fun. Not with all the rats. And the cold. And, now, the skeletonised earthly remains of three people, three young women. When did they die? How did they get there?
Homicide detective Luc Claudel, never Tempe's greatest fan, believes the bones are historic. Not his case, not his concern. The pizza parlour owner, the Prince of Pizza as Claudel calls him, found some 19th century buttons with the skeletons, another indicator of the bones' probable age. But Tempe has her doubts. Something doesn't make sense. She'll look at the bones in her lab and do Carbon 14 testing to establish approximate age. And she can analyse the tooth enamel to tell approximately where the women were born. If she's right, Claudel has three recent murders on his hands. Definitely his case. Detective Andrew Ryan, meanwhile, is acting mysterious. What are those private phone calls he takes in the other room, and why does he suddenly disappear just when Tempe is beginning to trust him and to hope he might be part of her life? Looks like more nights at home for Tempe with a good book and Birdie, the cat. As Tempe searches for answers in both her personal and professional lives, she finds herself drawn deeper into a web of evil from which there may be no escape. Women have disappeared, never to return... Tempe may be next.
| Paperback - Arrow (2004) |
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First British Edition Heinemann (2003) |
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Bare Bones
It's a summer of record-breaking heat in Charlotte, North Carolina and Dr Temperance Brennan is looking forward to her first vacation in years. She's almost out the door when the bones start appearing. First there's the newborn skeleton found in a wood stove. Who put the baby there? The mother, hardly more than a child herself, has disappeared. Next, a small plane flies into a rock face on a sunny afternoon. Both pilot and passenger are burned beyond recognition, their bodies covered with a strange black substance. What could it be? What sinister mission might the two have been on? Most puzzling is a cache of bones unearthed in a remote corner of the county. Some animal, some human, the bones are enough to keep Tempe busy for a long time. All the pieces of the mystery seem to lead back to an isolated farm. But what happened there and who will be the next victim? Tempe must find the answers by teasing secrets from the bones - if only she can decipher them in time.
A superb new thriller from the number one bestselling author of Grave Secrets.
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First British Edition Heinemann (2002) |
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Grave Secrets
It was a summer morning in 1982 when soldiers entered the village of Chupan Ya. Twenty years later, Dr Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist, travels to Guatemala to work on one of the most heartbreaking cases of her career. Twenty-three women and children are said to lie where Tempe and a team from the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology foundation must search for remains. It’s one of five mass graves. No records were kept. Families and neighbours refer to their lost members as `the disappeared’.
As Tempe digs in the cold, damp pit, the soil begins to yield ash and cinders. Its colour changes from mahogany to graveyard black. Her trowel touches something hard. The bone of a child no more than two years old. Something savage happened in this village twenty years ago.
And something savage is happening today. Four girls are missing from Guatemala City, including the daughter of the Canadian Ambassador. A skeleton is found in a septic tank at the back of a run-down hotel. Only someone with Tempe’s expertise can deduce who the victim was and how they died. But her path is blocked - by the district attorney’s office.
An unexplained highway robbery has already resulted in tragedy. Warning bells begin to ring for Tempe. The corruption runs too deep to know where to turn. It appears that some people would prefer that Chupan Ya stayed buried. And others want the missing girls kept the same way...
Acclaim for Kathy Reichs
'Completely engrossing... drags the reader into a different world, where dialogue is terse, dead men tell the best tales and the ice will freeze the bones. Read this and you'll know why the word "chiller" was invented' Frances Fyfield, Express
'Marvellous nuggets of forensic know-how... Action and location stylishly rendered... A guaranteed sleep-deterrent. Genuinely thrilling' Literary Review
‘A cracking good read’ Irish Independent
‘Her formula – depicting her sleuth alternately as the dispassionate dissector of corpses, the tough-talking woman in a macho man’s world, and the cat-loving singleton forced to spend what passes foe a private life keeping errant relatives out of trouble – is as winning here as in her earlier novels. The tart, bilingual dialogue is again first rate and, best of all, Deadly Decisions restores Brennan to an atmospheric Montreal’ Sunday Times
‘A brilliant novel, unputdownable’ Minette Walters
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First British Edition Heinemann (2001) |
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Fatal Voyage
When a plane crashes high in the mountains of North Carolina, Temperance Brennan is one of the first the scene. As a forensic anthropologist for the state, she serves on the region’s disaster response team. The task that confronts her is a sad and sickening one. Putting normal life on hold, Tempe and her colleagues must painstakingly identify the victims.
A chance discovery concerns her: a severed foot, well away from the main crash site. A deserted house close by is buried so deep in the woods that locals claim to know nothing of its existence. And her examination of the foot throws up more questions than it answers.
Before she can make any progress, Tempe’s professional standing is threatened. But she fears that, air tragedy aside, another corpse dies somewhere in the woods. Pitting, herself against a conspiracy of silence, Tempe vows to bring justice for her mystery victim…
Acclaim for Kathy Reichs
'Terrific and terrifying... Excellent plotting, appealingly headstrong heroine and superb mastery of tension’ The Times
'With its pacy action, gritty realism, insights into an unusual form of detection, a setting in bilingual Montreal and a heroine with a delicious turn of phrase, Déjà Dead cannot be beat' Independent
About The Author
Kathy Reichs is forensic anthropologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, and the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Quebec, and has as a result part based her novels on her vast experience in the area of forensic science where she specialises in bones. At present she is one of only 56 people certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology and very few of these are women. Like her leading character Dr Brennan, Kathy Reichs has to not only function but excel in the masculine world of law enforcement. A professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at charlotte, Dr Reichs is a native of Chicago, where she received her PhD at Northwestern. She divides her time between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Montreal.
Kathy Reichs is often called upon to be an expert witness in criminal trials and it is her testimony which can sometimes make the difference between getting a conviction and not. She recently made a trip to Tanzania and Rwanda where she was part of a team gathering evidence against those accused of genocide in the region. Due to the nature of her work death threats are not uncommon and she keeps the whereabouts of her family as secret as possible.
Kathy Reichs’s first novel, Deja Dead, shot straight to number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list and won the 1997 Ellis Award for Best First Novel. It became an international bestseller, as did its successors, Death du Jour, Deadly Décisions, Fatal Voyage, Grave Secrets, Bare Bones and Monday Mourning. Cross Bones is Kathy Reich’s eighth novel featuring Temperance Brennan.
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
Cross Bones
(Heinemann,
2005)
Jul 05
(Temperance Brennan)
Monday Mourning
(Heinemann,
2004)
(Temperance Brennan)
Bare Bones
(Heinemann,
2003)
Arrow Pbk Mar 04
(Temperance Brennan)
Grave Secrets
(Heinemann,
2002)
Arrow Pbk Apr 03
(Temperance Brennan)
Fatal Voyage
(Heinemann,
2001)
(Temperance Brennan)
Deadly Decisions
(Heinemann,
2000)
Arrow Pbk Jan 01
(Temperance Brennan)
Death du Jour
(Heinemann,
1999)
(Temperance Brennan)
Deja Dead
(Heinemann,
1998)
(Temperance Brennan)
Cross Bones
by Kathy Reichs
