The Mystery Starts Here

“206 Bones” begins with series regular Temperance Brennan handcuffed and buried in some place underground. She does not remember how she got there; she is injured, and terrified, but attempts to save herself. Then Ms. Reichs shows us the series of events that led up to the kidnapping.

In one, Brennan discovers that an unknown enemy is trying to discredit her. In the other, Quebec authorities, having discovered a disturbing number of seemingly murdered elderly women during the past year or so, fear that they are looking for a serial killer of elderly women. Brennan and her one-time lover Ryan are on the cases.

I found the story to be a pleasant, though unexciting read. The principal reason for the lack of excitement was that the solution was very obvious before page 100, causing me to have that “how could Brennan be so dumb” feeling. The other principal fault is that, when the full solution becomes evident, it’s hard to believe, because the behavior of the villains seems out of proportion to their motivation and backgrounds, as described. This latter issue could have been solved by more patient character development on the part of the author. In fact, the book as a whole seems rushed, in the sense that things are sketched that would be stronger if they had been more carefully drawn.

There is also a fair amount of what some will think is “padding” — i.e. incidents that don’t really advance the story. For me, these scenes were fun and help flesh out the lives of our characters, although I admit that some could have been better blended into the story

Reichs knows her subject well and has the ability to go into graphic detail in a way that any reasonably intelligent reader can understand. Unfortunately, after a few pages of detail, my eyes glazed over and I started skimming. All that painstaking detail doesn’t make this a very suspenseful thriller, in spite of a good beginning. The mystery is pretty well solvable way too early in the book and I suspect that most mystery/suspense readers will become very impatient with this.

All in all I’m sure I’ll pick up the next Kathy Reichs book because I do like the characters and she comes up with some very interesting plots.

The beginning of “Irresistible” sucked me right and and I could not put the book down. The book starts from the killer’s point of view. A woman is naked, drunk and talking into a tape recorder. She’s raging and rambling and you can’t quite figure out what’s happening. Then she dresses, goes out into the New York City night and picks up a man, but not just any man – a very specific one. Of course she’s drop dead gorgeous but she also seems to know a lot about the man. They have a few drinks, he invites her back to his place, they have sex and…kills and mutilates him. She showers and cleans the apartment then writes on the bathroom wall in the man’s blood, “I know you.”

The point of view switches to the police detective in the sex crimes division who will work the case. His name is Conrad Voort and he comes from a long line of cops and he’s also incredibly wealthy. He’s a series character and I’ve read a previous book with him in it. To me, it never made sense why Voort (he’s always referred to by his last name) would continue to put himself in danger being a cop, when he doesn’t have to. He could retire or do something else. 

Voort is an interesting character but at this point the book slows down because there is a lot of author intrusion. I really do not care about his ancestors, when they arrived in the new world, how they made there money, etc. All that exterraneous information deviated from the plot and I started skimming. The author also has a weird penchant for describing what everyone is wearing! I really didn’t care and it added nothing to the story.

The female serial killer has a list of four men’s names and she intends to kill them all. Voort’s is the last name on the list. We get to see her picking up number two and then killing number three. The pace of the book slows toward the middle and doesn’t really pick up until the end. We find out what motivates the killer and how she’s come by all that information – and it’s interesting. While I enjoyed the book, I think it would have been better if Voort had been humanized a bit more. A lot of the story was tangled up with him, his girlfriends, past and present and all the Dutch history.

I’m not sure I’d ever read another Voort book but “Irresistible” did keep me interested until the end.