Bones to Ashes

click here for more details, find new or used items

Kathy Reichs

Our price £9.74 (£18.99)

New from £4.50

Used from £4.75

Pages: 320 (Hardcover)

ISBN: 0434014621

Pub: William Heinemann Ltd

Pub date: 2007-08-30

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 746

Editorial Review:

Kathy Reichs is something special. Since achieving a secure position in the upper echelons of crime writers, she has refused to rest on her laurels and (with only the occasional misstep) has consolidated her success with a series of novels that subtly finesse the formula that has gleaned her so many readers.
Bones to Ashes is the latest title to add lustre to her reputation. Dr Temperance Brennan is examining the skeleton of a young girl, and finds herself losing the necessary distance she tries to maintain from all the cases she works on. Are the bones deformed or diseased? Or has some post-mortem damage been wrought upon them? Coroner Yves Bradette seems prepared file this information in the Dead Letters Department -- an ancient case, with no current relevance. But (as so often before) Tempe has other ideas, and something is stirring in her synapses -- a mystery involving the disappearance of a childhood friend. Matters are complicated when Detective Andrew Ryan (assigned to an allied case) asks Tempe to help with three missing persons - a trio of unidentified female corpses. Is there a serial killer at work?

There is often a defining moment when the work of a much-loved author imperceptibly becomes over-familiar, and readers have less enthusiasm for their work. Thankfully, on the evidence of Bones to Ashes, that day is quite some time in the future for Kathy Reichs, as all the elements that have made her books so involving are still being polished and refined here. Followers of Temperance Brennan need not hesitate to add this to their collection. --Barry Forshaw

Reader Reviews:

Enjoyable, but a bit predictable (0/0 people found this helpful)

I have read all Kathy Reichs' books and enjoyed them all: the earlier ones a bit more than the more recent. I admire her ingenuity in constructing exciting stories and I like the authentic medico-scientific descriptions, in contrast to some other writers whose inaccurate allusions to science and medicine detract from the flow of the narrative. In her previous book, Break No Bones, I felt that the quality of writing had deteriorated with more wise-cracking and mentioning products (a bit like Patricia Cornwell). In Bones to Ashes the author has reverted to her own style of good writing. My quibbles are that I wish her heroine, Temperance Brennan, didn't in a formulaic way in each book get assaulted and act stupidly by blundering into crime scenes: she a forensic scientist, not a detective!

Save the Acknowledgements for Last (0/0 people found this helpful)

Acknowledgements are sometimes put at the end of novels for a good reason - in case they spoil a plot point. The acknowledgements in this book were at the start. Lucky for the author, I didn't know what a *L-word* was. Just in case your vocabulary is bigger than mine, I suggest you save reading the acknowledgements for last because, indeed, that *L-word* stuff was the most fascinating aspect of this novel. (It's a medical something, by the way.) In non-spoiler news, the novel brings attention to the Acadian people, whom I'd never heard of before. Yay, I learned something! Also featuring are Tempe Brennan's summer childhood friend, her somewhat trashy sister Harry, and a cockatiel who quotes the Black Eyed Peas and Korn. Good times!

A great whodunnit... again!, (20/21 people found this helpful)

After the previous two books of the Temperance Brennan series ("Break No Bones" and "Cross Bones"), I was starting to despair that the series had gone into an irrevocable nosedive. But "Bones to Ashes" brings back a slightly tauter writing style and some serious whodunnit puzzles. There's also a lot of what I call "whatdunnit"; that is, sometimes the reader doesn't even know what has happened for sure, which only deepens the mystery.

My only beef with the current book is the character of Harry, Tempe's younger sister. She is one of the most irritating, annoying, and unbelievable characters to ever appear in mystery fiction, and her presence in the story is very distracting. Don't kill her off, please, Ms. Reichs -- that would give Tempe even more angst -- but please leave her at home. I would also recommend "The Fates" by Tino Georgiou. I just finished it and can't stop talking about it> Must read.

Uninspiring! (0/0 people found this helpful)

Read some other books by this author -pretty much now got a standard formulaic approach. OK storyline but you can work out the end really easily -no real deep thought but if you enjoy a easy straight forward plot with fairly shallow character then this will be for you -its not a bad book but hardly inspiring!

Disappointing (0/1 people found this helpful)

I've been a Reichs fan for years, but I gave up on last year's offering, and am sorry to say I've given up on this one after 150 pages. The endless and highly detailed medical descriptions totally dominate, with the result that the story gets completely lost. Every discovery of bones...and there are plenty...leads to page upon page of anthropological commentary in infinite detail, so that one can soon forget which bones belong to who...and why we're bothering anyway! The Tempe Brennan books seem to have evolved into simply a vehicle for Reichs to air her comprehensive medical knowledge, and it's the end of the Brennan road for me.

Similar Products