Break No Bones - Softcover

Reichs, Kathy

3.98

30,448 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743297393 ISBN 13: 9780743297394

Publisher: Scribner, 2006

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It's the second-to-last day of archaeological field school - the students are working on a site of prehistoric graves on Dewees, a barrier island north of Charleston, South Carolina, when a much more recent burial is uncovered...The skeleton is articulated, the bone fresh and the vertebrae still connected by soft-tissue - it's a case forensic anthropologist, Temperance Brennan has to take. But her investigations soon have her in too deep, her entire view of humanity challenged, and the further she probes, the more she seems to be putting herself in danger...

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Review:

It must be harder and harder for Kathy Reichs to keep each new novel as forceful and dramatic as the one before--not that delicate effects (which are not Reichs’ thing!) are particularly easy, but there is a danger in a certain fatigue setting in for the reader when an author puts them so comprehensively through the ringer with each novel as Reichs does. Break No Bones is proof positive that the author still knows how to cannily ring the changes on theme of her earlier work--this one is every bit as unsettling as Bare Bones or Grave Secrets, but the path Reichs takes to our pulse rate is somewhat different.

Dr Temperance Brennan is working with her students at an archaeological field school on an Island near Charleston , South Carolina. A decomposing corpse is discovered in a shallow grave, showing evidence (connected vertebra, etc.,) that the body has not been dead for long. While engaged in this mystery, Tempe’s own life encounters real havoc when a bullet, possibly meant for her, hospitalises her estranged husband Peter; and her new relationship with Detective Andrew Ryan is in trouble. But, as so often before, cracking a mystery may cost her her life.

All of this is handled with the assurance that we have come to expect from Reichs, but there are new things here: Reichs' sense of structure has always been strongly linear, but the extra looseness of the narrative pays dividends in disorienting the reader. Set pieces, too, are more integrated, though with all the usual capacity to raise hairs on the back of the neck. When so many authors are repeating themselves to ever-diminishing effect, it’s good to see Reichs is clearly not content to rest on her laurels.

--Barry Forshaw

Review:

"You’ll want to keep turning the pages long after lights out to find out what happens next ... Reichs’ real-life expertise gives her novels an authenticity that most other crime novelists would kill for " (Daily Express)

"Reichs' seamless blending of fascinating science and dead-on psychological portrayals, not to mention a whirlwind of a plot, make Break No Bones a must read" (Jeffery Deaver)

"With Kathy Reichs the reader knows they're in the hands of an expert" (Sunday Express)

"Brennan is a winner, and so is Reichs" (Daily News)

"A truly impressive writer" (We Love This Book)

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