The leg bone (was once) connected to the thigh bone 

Kathy Reich­s’s fifth nov­el Grave Secrets does­n’t depart very far from the for­mu­la Reichs devel­oped over the first four. I wrote in my review of Fatal Voy­age, her fourth, that Reichs had hit her stride and come into her own as a nov­el­ist. This fifth book in the Tem­per­ence Bren­nan series con­firms it. If through her first three nov­els she focused just on get­ting the books writ­ten, with her fourth and fifth she’s relaxed into the mechan­ics enough to focus on the story.

Grave Secrets kept me guess­ing. As pok­er play­ers have «tells» so too do writ­ers. Some­times it’s called fore­shad­ow­ing, but when it’s too obvi­ous the sus­pense is ruined, which is bad in most nov­els and worse in a mys­tery. It was­n’t a prob­lem in Grave Secrets. Four-fifths of the way through I had no idea who the bad guys were. More clues came togeth­er and it seemed there was a lot of infor­ma­tion, but the puz­zle pieces weren’t mak­ing a picture.

As the out­comes were revealed they still made sense, with some appro­pri­ate lev­el of sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief. It’s a mys­tery adven­ture nov­el so an extra-vil­lain­ous vil­lain in the mix is no large sin.

Reich­s’s fond­ness for absurd­ly forced sim­i­les did con­tin­ue into this nov­el. I’m start­ing to won­der if it’s a game she’s play­ing, putting them in as a way of mak­ing fun of her­self. She makes few­er of them than ever, but when one appears it’s a stinker. This nov­el­’s ter­ri­ble sim­i­le: «one look and my new­found com­po­sure shat­tered like a wind­shield in a Schwarzeneg­ger movie.» Real­ly? That was what you picked as the best way to express shock and sur­prise? The fact that she does this so much less fre­quent­ly sug­gests to me that she’s learned not to force it so much but can’t resist throw­ing one in once in a while just to keep us on our toes. If she were obliv­i­ous she would just keep doing it, right?

Or it might be just my atti­tude about it. I could be get­ting more tol­er­ant of the occa­sion­al unfor­tu­nate sim­i­le because I see them less often. I could  be uncon­scious­ly cut­ting her some slack because her sto­ry­telling is get­ting stronger with each nov­el. One does­n’t get to be a good writer with­out putting some bad lines out there once in a while, I suppose.

Again I’ll issue a warn­ing. One of the strengths of these nov­els is the atten­tion paid to foren­sic detail. These are mur­der mys­ter­ies. Though Reichs nev­er cross­es the line into taste­less­ness or gra­tu­ity they are gen­er­al­ly not for the faint of heart. Grave Secrets is pos­si­bly the mildest of the Tem­per­ance Bren­nan nov­els in this regard, but there were still some unap­pe­tiz­ing moments.