Dem Dry Bones

The twelfth and final book I read in 2009 was Kathy Reichs’ third nov­el, *Dead­ly Deci­sions*. I’m a bit embar­rassed that I only got through twelve books last year, but 2008’s total came to sev­en, so I sup­pose things are improv­ing a bit.

I was­n’t cer­tain whether to keep on read­ing the Tem­per­ance Bren­nan series, but when I saw that it was about crimes com­mit­ted by bik­er gangs that cement­ed the deci­sion. After all, I’ve read a cou­ple books about crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion of bik­ers, so I want­ed to see how Reichs would por­tray the out­law gangs.

While the over­all sto­ry was good and con­sis­tent with Reichs’ first two nov­els, there was lit­tle but stereo­type ascribed to the out­law bik­er gangs. Reichs’ char­ac­ters tend to be on the flat side to begin with—in the third nov­el we begin to see depth in the *recur­ring* char­ac­ters — —so tak­ing on a sub­cul­ture she seems to know lit­tle about may have been a stretch for her. Nev­er­the­less, these aren’t char­ac­ter-dri­ven books; they are quite plot-dri­ven. Reichs has fall­en into some pat­terns in the con­struc­tion of her sto­ries but still spins a good tale. As usu­al, the high­light of the nov­el is the lev­el of detail and authen­tic­i­ty to the meth­ods of inves­ti­gat­ing mys­te­ri­ous crimes.

By now I’m invest­ed enough in the series that I’ll keep going with it. These are pleas­ant books that don’t insult the read­er’s intel­li­gence while remain­ing rel­a­tive­ly light read­ing. My only warn­ing is that, like her oth­er books, *Dead­ly Deci­sions* some­times gets a bit graph­ic in depic­tion of vio­lent crimes. Reichs’ voice in these parts is clin­i­cal and none of the gris­ly detail seems gra­tu­itous, but it might be a bit much for very sen­si­tive read­ers. Of course, if you’re a very sen­si­tive read­er, you might want to avoid mur­der mys­ter­ies entire­ly, no?