A real bare-bones mystery

I’m not ready to declare the Tem­per­ance Bren­nan nov­els to have jumped the shark with *Bare Bones*, but even with some time away from the series this one did­n’t do much for me. If in *[Fatal Voyage]([canonical-url:node/1313])* and *[Grave Secrets]([canonical-url:node/1317])* Kathy Reichs relaxed into the job and hit her stride, then in *Bare Bones* she might have relaxed a bit too much.

Reich­s’s writ­ing style con­tin­ues to improve. Gone are the forced sim­i­les found in her ear­li­er books. How­ev­er, the char­ac­ters aren’t even pre­tend­ing to devel­op depth in *Bare Bones*. If I had­n’t already read the pre­vi­ous books, I’d be left with no sense of even Tempe Bren­nan’s per­son­al­i­ty. The few col­or­ful minor char­ac­ters were enter­tain­ing enough, but most­ly sta­t­ic car­i­ca­tures, not devel­oped and mul­ti­di­men­sion­al characters.

Fur­ther, the sto­ry’s struc­ture did­n’t seem well-devel­oped. She reused plot devices from ear­li­er nov­els. The end­ing was abrupt and seemed entire­ly acci­den­tal. There was no *epi­ta­sis* lead­ing up to the cli­max, giv­ing the impres­sion that Reichs hit her tar­get word count and sim­ply wrapped up the book with a per­func­to­ry ending.

What was most dis­ap­point­ing was how lit­tle *Bare Bones* seemed to be about the sci­en­tif­ic and foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tion. The aspect I most look for­ward to in the Tem­per­ance Bren­nan books is the authen­tic­i­ty of her inves­ti­ga­tions. Reich­s’s own expe­ri­ence in this field is the strength of the series. Facts are revealed through a process of evi­den­tiary inves­ti­ga­tion. Small details come back as sig­nif­i­cant, and it is seen how we all leave unin­tend­ed foot­prints as we go through life, even as we might try to hide or min­i­mize our trail. But *Bare Bones* had only a smat­ter­ing of this detail. It may as well have been any oth­er pulp mys­tery story.

My favorite part of the entire book was read­ing the end notes. Reichs relat­ed an anec­dote about a fel­low foren­sic anthro­pol­o­gist involv­ing a moose. It was a nice, per­son­al touch from the author that came as a refresh­ing side­bar, espe­cial­ly after the nov­el itself which fell so flat.

It only just occurred to me how cloy­ing­ly apro­pos that the series’ tit­u­lar char­ac­ter, a recov­ered alco­holic who does not drink, is named Tem­per­ance. I sup­pose the fact that I only real­ized this after read­ing a half-dozen of these nov­els is rea­son enough to over­look the device, but you can imag­ine my eyes rolling skyward.