Fatal Voyage: A Novel (Temperance Brennan Novels) - Softcover

Reichs, Kathy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743230353 ISBN 13: 9780743230353

Publisher: Scribner, 2001

Synopsis

New York Times, #1 international bestselling author, and world-class forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs, hailed by the critics as the new Patricia Cornwell, takes Temperance Brennan behind the scenes of a major commercial airliner crash in this magnificent follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Deadly Decisions.

Temperance Brennan hears the news on her car radio. An Air TransSouth flight has gone down in the mountains of western North Carolina, taking with it eighty-eight passengers and crew. As a forensic anthropologist and a member of the regional DMORT team, Tempe rushes to the scene to assist in body recovery and identification.

Tempe has seen death many times, working with the medical examiners in North Carolina and Montreal, but never has tragedy struck with such devastation. She finds a field of carnage: torsos in trees, limbs strewn amongst bursting suitcases and smoldering debris. Many of the dead are members of a university soccer team. Is Tempe's daughter, Katy, among them?

Frantic with worry, Tempe joins colleagues from the FBI, the NTSB, and other agencies to search for explanations. Was the plane brought down by a bomb, an insurance plot, a political assassination, or simple mechanical failure? And what about the prisoner on the plane who was being extradited to Canada? Did someone want him silenced forever?

Even more puzzling for Tempe is a disembodied foot found near the debris field. Tempe's microscopic analysis suggests it could not have belonged to any passenger. Whose foot is it, and where is the rest of the body? And what about the disturbing evidence Tempe discovers in the soil outside a remote mountain enclave? What secrets lie hidden there, and why are certain people eager to stop Tempe's investigation? Is she learning too much? Coming too close?

With help from Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, who has his own sad reason for being at the crash, and from a very special dog named Boyd, Tempe calls upon deep reserves of courage and upon her forensic skill to uncover a shocking, multilayered tale of deceit and depravity.

Written with the riveting authenticity that only world-class forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs can provide, Fatal Voyage pairs witty, elegant prose with pulse-pounding storytelling in a tour de force worthy of crime writing's new superstar.

About this title

Review:

Tempe Brennan, Kathy Reichs' forensic anthropologist heroine, often finds herself in physical jeopardy. In Fatal Voyage, her fourth outing, someone is trying to kill her and also to destroy her professional reputation with trumped-up charges of unethical behaviour.

Tempe is called in when a plane full of college athletes goes down in the remoter parts of the forests of North Carolina. She finds herself investigating a spare foot she rescued from coyotes, a foot which is significantly more decomposed than the crash victims and which has symptoms of gout, a disease most of the dead young people had no time to contract. There is a locked house and walled courtyard out in the woods that do not appear on any maps and it seems almost as if her simple knowledge of their being there has offended the powerful of the world.

As always, Kathy Reichs manages to combine a detailed knowledge of who the dead were and how they died with a profound sense of the sadness of things. This is a book that never lets us forget amid the dissections and tests for genetic markers that each human death is that of a tragic and irreplaceable human being. Tempe is one of the more attractive of the current crop of women detectives simply because she is flawed and vulnerable as well as smart, righteous and brave. Reichs never lets you forget that crime novels should acquaint us with good people as well as human evil. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

Dr. Temperance Brennan is ."..the lab lady most likely to dethrone Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta."

-- "USA Today"

"The plot moves with electric force."

-- "Publishers Weekly"

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0743230353
• ISBN 13: 9780743230353
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 528