“Readers have come to expect certain things from a Brennan novel: a strong protagonist, a cast of well-drawn supporting characters, an intriguing mystery, a surprising resolution, and at least one really good scene in which Brennan puts someone in their place…Fans will happily check all those boxes here: this is A-game Reichs, with crisp prose, sharp dialogue, and plenty of suspense.”
—Booklist
Description
#1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs’s twentieth “brilliant” (Louise Penny) thriller featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, whose examinations of unidentified bodies ignite a terrifying series of events. “This is A-game Reichs, with crisp prose, sharp dialogue, and plenty of suspense” (Booklist).
On the way to hurricane-ravaged Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, Tempe receives a call from the Charleston coroner. The storm has tossed ashore a medical waste container. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic and bound with electrical wire. Tempe recognizes many of the details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec fifteen years earlier. With a growing sense of foreboding, she travels to Montreal to gather evidence.
Meanwhile, health authorities in South Carolina become increasingly alarmed as a human flesh-eating contagion spreads. So focused is Tempe on identifying the container victims that, initially, she doesn’t register how their murders and the pestilence may be related. But she does recognize one unsettling fact. Someone is protecting a dark secret—and willing to do anything to keep it hidden.
An absorbing look at the sinister uses to which genetics can be put and featuring a cascade of ever-more-shocking revelations, The Bone Code is “a murder mystery story that races across America at the speed of fright” (James Patterson).
Reviews
“As usual in this venerable franchise, the forensics are grimly detailed, the cliffhanger chapter endings nonstop, and the range of incidents competing for attention with the issues the newest remains have thrown into the spotlight dizzying….Comfort food for fans who are far past the point of being easily shocked.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Few crime writers are as edifying and terrifying as Kathy Reichs. She never lets you forget that “folk do the damnedest things.”
—The Times (UK)
“A strong story told in a breezy fashion with an interesting [array of] memorable minor characters.”
—Evening Standard (UK)