5.0 out of 5 stars
A Bone-Chilling Page-Turner, Sep 13 2006
Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan and a team of forensic experts head to Guatemala to excavate an old well where twenty-three women and children are said to have been shot, butchered, burned and buried. But some secrets are meant to be buried and sometimes the past is meant to stay dead.
When Tempe hears the horrific attack of two associates, she is spurred into action and her investigation takes her across borders and into unknown territory.
Partnered with Montreal detective Andrew Ryan and Special Crimes Investigator Bartolomé Galiano, Tempe investigates the disappearances of missing women. And two handsome men leads to a spicy but complicated subplot. And ultimately Tempe must make a choice.
Grave Secrets is a story of the "desaparecidos"--the disappeared, the missing. It's a story of black market greed and scientific advances that may prove to be to our detriment. Reichs doesn't just write a gripping, suspenseful tale, she also strives to administer a message that is far more powerful. Yet she entertains while doing so. I found this Tempe Brennan novel to have more 'heart' than the previous novels in the series.
I'll admit, I'm a `Bones' junkie--and I love the actors' portrayal of the characters in the TV version, but in Reichs' novels, you'll find far more depth than in a one-hour show. Kathy Reichs is the `Queen of the Past' and a writer extraordinaire.
~Cheryl Kaye Tardif, [.........]
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3.0 out of 5 stars
A little more forensic detail, if you please!, Aug 7 2009
It's a sad fact that world history is rife with complex, deeply disturbing stories of mass murders and genocides by governments and dictators - Germany, Japan and China, Uganda, Haiti and more. The list is all too lengthy. Temperance Brennan, forensic pathologist, is on site in Guatemala helping the current government to clear up a period in their history that they have chosen to expose to the light of day and the scrutiny of a critical world that they hope will forgive them for their actions in a dirtier past.
When she's ambushed by gunmen and an investigative reporter is brutally murdered, it becomes apparent that, despite the government's wishes for an open investigation of the massacre, there are obviously secrets that someone will do almost anything to keep buried. Temperance Brennan comes to the realization that she may be on somebody's hit list.
On the plus side, Temperance Brennan is a somewhat more focused, considerably less angst-ridden character than her American counterpart, Kay Scarpetta, as she is portrayed in the Patricia Cornwell novels. That's certainly not to say that she's flat and without a certain depth and flair. "Grave Secrets", for example, finds Brennan torn between two lovers, her long-time Canadian friend, Lt Andrew Ryan, and Bartolomé Galiano, a hotter blooded, more ardent Hispanic sort of more recent acquaintance.
Publisher's Weekly was graphic and rather effusive in their praise of the novel. They talked about skillfully interwoven plots and red herrings that melted into "a satisfying puddle of sex, sleaze, greed and gore". For my taste, I'd prefer to see a little more focus on the mechanics of forensic investigation and a little less attention to a plot that I believe was too complex by half.
Leave the plots and counter-plots to the international spy vs spy intrigue thrillers, I say. If you're going to create a protagonist who's a skilled forensic pathologist, then let her do her work. Don't attempt to make her all things to all people capable of puzzling through plots so complex as to defy believability and the best police efforts of two countries.
Paul Weiss
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