Amazon.com Exclusive: Jeffery Deaver on Devil Bones
Jeffery Deaver is the bestselling author of The Broken Window, The Sleeping Doll, The Cold Moon, The Blue Nowhere, The Bone Collector, The Empty Chair, The Devil's Teardrop, and fifteen other suspense novels. His book A Maiden's Grave was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, and his novel The Bone Collector was made into a feature release from Universal Pictures, starring Denzel Washington. He lives in North Carolina.

It's always a pleasure to see a new installment in the saga of Temperence Brennan, the forensic anthropologist who plies her trade in both Charlotte, North Carolina, and Montreal.

Devil Bones, set in the U S of A, opens with a grisly discovery that offers a very different take on This Old House. Tempe is pulled from staid academia to investigate the troubling and mystifying scene, which involves cauldrons, ceremonial religious artifacts and, most troubling, the severed head of a teenage girl.

Another torso is located nearby, and the story is off and running.

Tempe and Charlotte police department detective Erskine "Skinny" Slidell, follow leads that take them through the seamier and the chicer sides of North Carolina's largest city--the worlds of Santeria, voodoo, the Wiccan religion (any witches out there: I'm not lumping them together!), and male prostitution. Our heroine also locks horns with a crusading minister turned politician, and there's a reporter who manages to show up at all the wrong moments.

Reichs juggles the questions of who done it (and who's gonna get done next) until the very end with consummate skill. In series books, readers treat characters as friends and follow those storylines as ardently as the ones involving murder and mayhem. Not content to keep things simmering on low boil, Reichs dunks her protagonist into a pressure cooker, with plenty of turmoil stirred up by a former lover, a--possibly--current one and, most significantly for this reader, yet another ghost of life past, about which I'll say no more here. Trouble on campus also surfaces for Professor Brennan, with whom we experience one of the most harrowing moments in the book: a meeting of professors and department heads (university politics as weapon of mass destruction). Oh, and we can't forget some brief appearances by the ex, who is behaving just like, well, an ex.

It might have been my imagination but I believe too that I saw the bones, if you will, of a possible subplot involving Tempe's daughter, Katy, who's working in the public defender's office. I'm looking forward to seeing Reich confirm or deny this in the next installment.

In Devil Bones we get plenty of what we've come to expect in a Reichs novel: engrossing details on forensic anthropology and anatomical science. Her mastery, and love, of those subjects, which Reichs herself practices (in both Montreal and Charlotte, by the way), is evident in her writing. We're also treated to plenty of esoterica about non-mainstream religions and history (I mean, I live in North Carolina and didn't know Charlotte was named for a seventeen-year-old German duchess). The author deftly negotiates that fine line between using such information to enhance the experience of reading a novel and padding prose. She gives us what we need to know--to enrich plot, character or atmosphere--and then gets back to the story.

And speaking of which: As an author writing in the same genre, I was impressed with Reichs's ability to keep the roller coaster on track and speeding along, page after page. She's a true master of cliff hangers--a neglected skill in a field where far too many lazy authors end chapters with people leaving rooms, falling asleep or offering hand-tipping foreshadowings of what's to come. I call this the question-mark factor and when writing my thriller I actually tally up the number of scenes that end in a compelling, unresolved issue that drives the reader forward.

Reichs has question marks aplenty.

My one complaint: I read the novel in one sitting. But I'm hoping that while poor Tempe may want a break after everything that happens to her in Devil Bones, author Reichs isn't giving her any rest and is hard at work on number 12.

--Jeffery Deaver

Following her most successful book to date, Kathy Reichs -- international number one bestselling author, forensic anthropologist, and producer of the Fox television hit Bones -- returns to Charlotte, North Carolina, where Temperance Brennan encounters a deadly mix of voodoo, Santería, and devil worship in her quest to identify two young victims.

In a house under renovation, a plumber uncovers a cellar no one knew about, and makes a rather grisly discovery -- a decapitated chicken, animal bones, and cauldrons containing beads, feathers, and other relics of religious ceremonies. In the center of the shrine, there is the skull of a teenage girl. Meanwhile, on a nearby lakeshore, the headless body of a teenage boy is found by a man walking his dog.

Nothing is clear -- neither when the deaths occurred, nor where. Was the skull brought to the cellar or was the girl murdered there? Why is the boy's body remarkably well preserved? Led by a preacher turned politician, citizen vigilantes blame devil worshippers and Wiccans. They begin a witch hunt, intent on seeking revenge.

Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan -- "five-five, feisty, and forty-plus" -- is called in to investigate, and a complex and gripping tale unfolds in this, Kathy Reichs's eleventh taut, always surprising, scientifically fascinating mystery.

With a popular series on Fox -- now in its third season and in full syndication -- Kathy Reichs has established herself as the dominant talent in forensic mystery writing. Devil Bones features Reichs's signature blend of forensic descriptions that "chill to the bone" (Entertainment Weekly) and the surprising plot twists that have made her books phenomenal bestsellers in the United States and around the world.

A skull buried in dirt within a cauldron. A headless corpse in the lake. Forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan is called in by Charlotte police to determine if the murders are related. The signs point to magical medicine - voodoo? Santeria? witchcraft? devil worship? Soon murders of a more prosaic type occur at an alarming rate, and an evangelical city counselor feels duty bound to point fingers and dramatically demand justice.

Reichs puts Tempe through her paces with the passages of forensic information that have become her trade mark. She also spices up her love life, gets her fired, and plunges her into a brief period of despair. All of the criminal pieces ultimately fall into place, but the more personal ones are left in limbo.

Tempe and her mysteries are interesting and informative enough to make readers wonder what's coming up next. Not great, but entertaining, interesting, and competently written.

This is the 11th book in the series about Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist, who divides her time between Charlotte, North Carolina and Montreal, Quebec, Canada. This tale of secret ceremonies and the religious rituals of Wicca, Santeria, Voodooism and Satanism takes place in North Carolina. One part of the story line is about a skull and other artifacts found in a basement in an old house. Was a skull from a victim of sacrifice? A headless body of a young man is also found and his body bears markings of symbols of a religious ritual. This book gets bogged down and is hard reading until the last few chapters when the pace picks up. There are too many anthropological and crime scene details. This is the least readable of all her books so far. Let's hope she gets back on track with the next book in the series.

Just like Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs appears to be faltering and straining to continue producing enjoyable, fascinating books around her character Tempe Brennan. The book starts fine, but than becomes jumbled and full of unnecessary characters to further complicate the picture. We all know Miss Reichs is a high IQ woman, but why make a read so complicated that you wish you had made diagrams so you could truly connect all the dots? I forced myself to finish this book, and realize I began to not care around the last 100 to 150 pages. To many cerebral brain cells needed to fire to keep up with an "enjoyable" reading experience rather than feeling like I was studying for a college test. It is also difficult for me to continue feeling sympathy and empathy for the literary character of Tempe who seems to be a train wreck waiting to happen due to her unprofessional behavior in the book and poor judgment in her personal life.
I guess they will continue to print these, but I'm glad mine came from the library.

I have read all of Kathy Reichs novels and can find pleasure in reading one of her books. They are not always a light read but they are still on the entertainment level. I did find the religion angle a new twist to her previous books. Her relationship is not what we all tune into her books for although it is a story line that you can follow in the backgound of all her books.

This book and the entire series has a good plot line, but Tempe could definitely use a few courses in diplomacy and anger management. How hard is it to follow your bosses order not to talk to the press, then Tempe goes head to head with a politician on TV. If you don't like your heroes making a fool of themselves in the extreme (and I don't) this book will drive you nuts. To be truthful I had to skip entire paragraphs because her actions were so stupid