March's Must-Reads: Mystery, Romance, and Thrills Await!
Kathy Reichs
Both a forensics expert who has seen -- firsthand -- the aftermath of murderers and a novelist whose heroine tracks villains like the "Blade Cowboy," Kathy Reichs has some ideas about what the face of evil looks like: ordinary. "I see the perpetrator across the courtroom when I'm testifying. Generally, I'm underwhelmed," she said in a 2000 interview published on her web site." I'm always shocked by how totally normal they look. They look like my Uncle Frank, usually."
Reichs mulled over those experiences for about seven years before deciding to apply her ideas to fiction. Out came Déjà Dead in 1997, introducing mystery fans to a new but, more likely than not, recognizable heroine: forensics expert Temperance Brennan, a fortyish, recovering alcoholic on the run from a wobbling marriage. Brennan a sort of mix between Nancy Drew and Quincy is also something of a hothead, prone to marching off on her own when she runs afoul of a sexist male cop. This is the kind of woman who would sit down to brunch with Vic Warshawski, Kay Scarpetta, or Jane Tennison, if any of them did brunch.
As a forensic anthropologist for the state of North Carolina, as well as the province of Québec, Reichs draws heavily from her own experiences standing over the autopsy table. Her novels -- Death du Jour, Deadly Decisions, Grave Secrets and the like are packed with the kind of well informed clinical details that make critics take notice. "The doctor clearly knows a hawk from a handsaw," wrote The New York Times about one of her books.
She also built some parallels to her own biography when creating Tempe Brennan. Both women are forensic anthropologists with the unlikely dual addresses of North Carolina and Canada. But Reichs rolls her eyes when asked about the comparisons. "Personally, she's completely her own person," Reichs told USA Today in 1997. "She gets physically involved. She takes risks I've never been tempted to take."
Reichs was editing forensics textbooks when she began toying with writing a novel. The initial result, she said, was a dud: slow, boring, and in the third person. But it picked up steam when she came up with the Brennan character. Inspired by friend and medical examiner Bill Maples, author of Dead Men Do Tell Tales, she sat down to write, meticulously drafting an outline of her story and getting up early to write before teaching classes at the University of North Carolina. It took her two years.
The effort paid off when her manuscript made the rounds of the Frankfurt Book Fair. A heated auction won Reichs a million-dollar, two-book deal.
Critics and readers alike loved Tempe. Wrote the Library Journal, "Despite her ability to work among fetid, putrefying smells that 'leap out and grab' and her 'go-to-hell attitude' with seasoned cops, Tempe is as vulnerable as a soft Carolina morning." And People magazine said, "Reichs not only serves up a delicious plot, she also brings a new recipe to hard-boiled cop talk."
Over chicken salad lunches with newspaper reporters, Reichs will casually talk about dismembered bodies, maggots, and concerns for her children's security in light of some of the unsavory characters she'd testified against. But then she'll confess her true idea of a waking nightmare. "[My] idea of horror would be to sit in a little gray office all day and add up columns of numbers," she told USA Today. "I say to people, 'How do you do that?"'
The Bone Hacker, August 2023 A Temperance Brennan Novel #22
Hardcover / e-Book Grave Secrets, July 2023 Temperance Brennan Series #5
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book Cold, Cold Bones, June 2023 Temperance Brennan Series #21
Trade Paperback / e-Book A Conspiracy of Bones, March 2020 Temperance Brennan #19
Hardcover / e-Book Two Nights, February 2018
Mass Market Paperback (reprint) Bare Bones, October 2017
Mass Market Paperback Two Nights, July 2017
Hardcover / e-Book Speaking in Bones, August 2015 Temperance Brennan #18
Hardcover / e-Book Bones Never Lie, October 2014 Temperance Brennan #17
Hardcover / e-Book Bones Of The Lost, September 2013 Temperance Brennan #16
Hardcover / e-Book Code, March 2013 Virals #3
Hardcover / e-Book Bones Are Forever, September 2012 Temperance Brennan
Hardcover / e-Book No Rest For The Dead, July 2012
Paperback / e-Book Deja Dead, February 2012
Hardcover / e-Book (reprint) Seizure, October 2011 Virals #2
Hardcover / e-Book Flash And Bones, September 2011 Temperance Brennan #14
Hardcover Virals, September 2011 Virals #1
Paperback / e-Book Spider Bones, September 2010 Tempe Brennan #13
Hardcover 206 Bones, September 2009
Hardcover Devil Bones, September 2008 Temperance Brennan
Hardcover Break No Bones, September 2007 Temperence Brennan #9
Paperback (reprint) Bones to Ashes, September 2007 Temperence Brennan #10
Hardcover Break No Bones, July 2006 Temperance Brennan Series, #9
Hardcover Cross Bones, June 2006 Temperance Brennan #8
Paperback Cross Bones, July 2005
Hardcover Monday Mourning, June 2005 Temperence Brennan #7
Mass Market Paperback Grave Secrets, July 2003
Mass Market Paperback Fatal Voyage, July 2002
Mass Market Paperback Deadly Decisions, July 2001
Mass Market Paperback