Hardcover, 317 pages
Published
July 15th 2002
by Scribner Book Company
(first published 2002)
ISBN
0684859734
(ISBN13: 9780684859736)
edition language
English
original title
Grave Secrets
series
characters
setting
The Dust Flap
"It was a summer morning in 1982 when soldiers ravaged the village of Chupan Ya, raping and killing women and children. Twenty-three victims are said to lie in the well where, twenty years later, Dr. Temperance Brennan and a team from the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation now dig. No records were kept. To their families, the dead are "the disappeared."Forensic anthropologist for the medical examiners in North Carolina and Montreal, Tempe is in Guatemala for a month's service to help some families identify and bury their dead. She digs in a cold, damp pit where she finds a hair clip, a fragment of cloth, a tiny sneaker. Her trowel touches something hard: the hip of a child no more than two years old. It's heartbreaking work. Something savage happened here twenty years ago. The violence continues today. The team is packing up for the day when an urgent satellite call comes in. Two colleagues are under attack. Shots ring out, and Tempe listens in horror to a woman's screams. Then there is silence. Dead silence. With this new violence, everything changes, both for the team and for Tempe, who's asked by the Guatemalan police for her expertise on another case. Four privileged young women have vanished from Guatemala City in recent months. One is the Canadian ambassador's daughter. Some remains have turned up in a septic tank, and Tempe unfortunately knows septic tanks. Teaming with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolome Galiano, and with Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, who may have more than just professional reasons to join her on the case, Tempe soon finds herself in a dangerous web that stretches far beyond Guatemala's borders. The stakes are huge. As power, money, greed, and science converge, Tempe must make life-altering choices. From cutting-edge science in the lab, where Tempe studies fetal bones and cat hair DNA, to a chilling en-counter in a lonely morgue, Grave Secrets is powerful, page-turning entertainment from a crime fiction superstar who combines riveting authenticity with witty, elegant prose"
My Comments
I have always loved the books that have been produced by Kathy Reichs I think she is a very talented writer and her contributions to the television series 'Bones' are quite substantial. This book in particular I found really gripping, it didn't take me long to read at all. The true involvement of Brennan in the Guatemala government through her expertise is highly gripping. The idea that it isn't something that is generally done and all the red tape that she faces to get the evidence she needs... The story is so enthralling, incorporating the fact that she has to travel to get test results she made need and in an act of kindness to the ambassador's wife. It's a true test of the strength of the character that Reichs has created. The intial reason for going out to Guatemala for Brennan is on an archeological dig to uncover the remains of yet another Chupan Ya mass graves. To turn this into a love triangle issue as well as the other thread for the case of the bones in the septic tank and the rest is a true example of the talent held by Reichs.
The characters in this book are so deep that they leave nothing to the imagination, it really is possible to get right into the story and feel as if you are walking alongside them rather than reading the words from the page. The added complications thrown into the mix really do help in the bringing to life of the story line. The real life factor of 'it never rains but it pours' is something that Reichs really does get right in her work. Reichs like her character Tempe Brennan is a truly busy woman with working for 2 different countries (Canada and America), being called on digs amongst being an expert witness/expert consultant for many different states it is amazing that she is able to turn out such brilliant novels. This is definitely well worth a read, it will have interested from cover to cover and leave you wanting a further insight into what else Brennan is going to get up to.
