A CONSPIRACY OF BONES by KATHY REICHS

 A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by

KATHY REICHS

THE BLURB:

EVERY

A corpse with no hands.

BODY

A decade-old missing child case, full of buried lies.

HAS

A connection between them that only one person can find. And the more Temperance Brennan uncovers, the darker and more twisted the picture becomes.

SECRETS

THE REALITY:

Top marks for the display of the blurb at the back of the book! Arty in its conception, it did everything it was supposed to do in terms of arousing my interest.

I read this in fits and starts, and it was quite easy to pick up and regain the thread, especially as at some point in our heroine does the same- she's suffering from health problems to do with her head plus a possible concussion/ poisoning, and she needs to get her thoughts in order. With the Tempe Brennan novels, I always find her personal life (especially her relationship with Ryan) as intriguing as the crime elements to the story. Incidentally, the head problem is based on the author's real life experience, as are the bases for the crime element of all of her stories.

I've read most of the Tempe Brennan series and, to my mind, nothing will ever be as good as Deja Dead; her first novel. A Conspiracy of Bones was good, and tripped along nicely, but somehow failed to touch me. I'm glad she managed to score one up against her professional protagonist, Margot Heavner, and brought the case to some kind of conclusion, but to my mind too many parts were not tied up. All of the missing children were not explained (but maybe that's real life?) and the reason Tempe ended up in hospital was shoved right out to the back burner and I'm still extremely confused about that. Yet I don't feel the urge to re-read the novel for clarification. (Maybe I shouldn't read crime novels in fits and starts?)

What I enjoyed most were the mix of- often unsavoury- characters, and you do get a sense of reality, and the damages life can inflict upon some people- especially war veteran Duncan Keesing. But other books in this series seem to have some kind of melodramatic section that there's a real build-up to, and that was lacking in this book.

Even so, it's worth a go.