Evil Bones

Animal Tragic

Evil Bones 
by Kathy Reichs
Simon and Schuster
ISBN 9781398531222

So here we are again. Another year, another new instalment of Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan novels... the real Temperance Brennan, not the bizarrely un-Tempe-like version that appeared on the Bones TV show. Although... okay, I’ll get to that in a little while.

It goes without saying that Kathy Reichs’ books are cool page turners that, more often than not, cause the reader to hurtle through them at a very fast rate and, this one is no exception (I think it’s the quickest I’ve ever read one of her books). And this one, Evil Bones, ticks a lot of the signature boxes I’ve come to expect from this writer, in a story that involves Tempe and her usual accomplices investigating a series of killed, mutilated and unusually posed animals, courtesy of a serial killer who is obviously going to be stepping up to humans not too long after the book begins. 

So, signatures like... we have the usual, abundant number of cliff hanger sentences to end the majority of the chapters, to keep the reader jumping into the next chapter without pausing. Such as “Looked around in shock. Ruthie was gone.” or “As I turned, I felt something sting my left arm. A moment of dizziness. Then the world went black.” or even, the more succinct, “Holy Bloody Hell.”

Also included are the usual dalliances with Temperance’s dream states but, I have to say, the author shows a little more restraint than usual in terms of the real estate given over to her main character’s adventuresome slumbers in this book. That being said, there is a moment when Tempe enters a kind of trance state and has a ‘Millennium TV show’ style direct connection to the mind of the killer... which seemed a bit odd and is not mentioned again in the rest of the novel. Is it a case of future character development or, maybe it’s a pointed reference to the books Reichs writes with her daughter, which I’ve not actually read. I’m not sure... to be honest. But it was a strangely off-kilter moment in the book. 

However, it doesn’t really matter because the book crackles along and captivates the reader at every turn. One interesting things I found was, given the title of the novel, a definition of an evil act, from one of Tempe’s long term psychologist friends. The key points being the committing of a horrifying act accompanied by the deliberate planning of such and also coupled with the deed itself being an inexplicable thing in the eyes of other people.

All good stuff then except... okay, I have a few bits of negative criticism this time around. 

So aside from the annoying habit of, once again, referencing Bones as a TV show in the world of the novel (without Tempe mentioning once that the character on the show has the same name as her), I was quite taken aback when Reichs calls her character’s famous phone ring tone ‘the Kill Bill whistling clip’. Surely Reichs, along with a gazillion other people, will recognise that specific piece of music as being a main theme from the Agatha Christie  movie adaptation Twisted Nerve which Tarantino just needle dropped into his own film at an appropriate moment. 

And I also didn’t have too much trouble identifying the killer this time around (after my initial suspect turned up half way through the book as the next human victim). A certain mode of transport and the reoccurrence of it and its famous logo in the text seems to point fingers at the miscreant fairly early on. So, yeah, not fooled for very long this time around, I have to admit.

But the real problem for me is... this didn’t quite feel like it was Temperance Brennan doing the narration here. As in, it didn’t quite feel totally like Kathy Reichs writing this one and, I dunno, like I said, Tempe just doesn’t seem herself as much as usual. I doubt the idea but... it did make me think, at one point, if Reichs has started employing a ghost writer or uncredited co-writer to get her yearly novels out? Which just seems wrong... but I know other modern writers have done a similar thing of late. And the characters don’t seem to be firing on all cylinders this time around either... displaying the lack of quick action and logical deduction you would expect to find in a badly written horror movie. Not to mention it all feels a bit less epic than many of her previous novels. So, yeah, I was a little concerned at all this. 

But, not, as I said earlier, to the point where I didn’t thoroughly enjoy this book and, although not a jumping on point, fans of the original Temperance Brennan should definitely get a kick out of Evil Bones. So hopefully we’ll have another one published next year, for sure.