Tag: Kathy Reichs

‘Fire and Bones,’ by Kathy Reichs

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

This upcoming novel in the Temperance Brennan series will be released on August 6, 2024. As I said in my post about Rhett Revane’s upcoming novel Ditch Weed, I won’t be first in line to purchase my copy due to my beauty sleep requirements, and besides, I haven’t done a long-line-in-the-middle-of-the-night mission since the wild and crazy Harry Potter days.

I’ve read all (or mostly all) of Kathy Reichs’ novels. I haven’t slowed down even though “Bones,” the TV series based on the book hasn’t aired in prime time since 2017 after running for 246 episodes over twelve seasons. [You can read a brief 2017 interview with Reichs about the end of the series here.]

From the Publisher

“New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs returns with a twisty, unputdownable thriller featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, who finds herself at the center of a Washington, DC, arson investigation that spawns deepening levels of mystery and, ultimately, violence.

“Always apprehensive about working fire scenes, Tempe is called to Washington, DC, to analyze the victims of a deadly blaze and sees her misgivings justified. The devastated building is in Foggy Bottom, a neighborhood with a colorful past and present, and Tempe becomes suspicious about the property’s ownership when she delves into its history.

“The pieces start falling into place strangely and quickly, and, sensing a good story, Tempe teams with a new ally, telejournalist Ivy Doyle. Soon the duo learns that back in the thirties and forties the home was the hangout of a group of bootleggers and racketeers known as the Foggy Bottom Gang. Though interesting, this fact seems irrelevant—until the son of a Foggy Bottom gang member is shot dead at his home in an affluent part of the district. Coincidence? Targeted attacks? So many questions.

“As Tempe and Ivy dig deeper, an arrest is finally made. Then another Foggy Bottom Gang-linked property burns to the ground, claiming one more victim. Slowly, Tempe’s instincts begin pointing to the obvious: somehow, her moves since coming to Washington have been anticipated, and every path forward seems to bring with it a lethal threat.”

You can learn more about Reichs on her website here.  Here’s a sample. (“Dr. Reichs is one of only 100 forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. She served on the Board of Directors and as Vice President of both the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American Board of Forensic Anthropology and is currently a member of the National Police Services Advisory Council in Canada. She is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.”)

-Malcolm

Fate’s Arrows is the fourth book in Malcolm R. Campbell’s “Florida Folk Magic Series.” It’s available in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audio editions.

Potpourri for 10-15-23

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Potpourri, writing
  • “This film will be the biography of the continent’s most magnificent species, an improbable, shaggy beast that nonetheless has found itself at the center of many of our nation’s most thrilling, mythic, and sometimes heartbreaking tales. It is a quintessentially American story, filled with a diverse cast of fascinating characters. But it is also a morality tale encompassing two important and historically significant lessons that resonate today.” – Ken Burns Website.  I’m looking forward to this October 16 and 17.
  • It upsets me to read that “progressive” university students support the terrorist organization Hamas which is backed by Qatar and Iran under the pretense that it’s the real government of Palestine. The reports of Hamas’ attack against Israel read as war crimes, not legitimate protests against Palestinian problems. I stand by Israel against these barbaric terrorist organizations that won’t leave it alone.
  • I continue to enjoy the Kathy Reichs “Temperance Brennan” series of novels, having just ordered the 12th book in the series 206 Bones. I started reading these novels to learn more about the inspiration behind the “Bones” TV series and have not been disappointed. They read well, often put Temperance in danger when she goes into the field on her own recognizance, and have plenty of humor.
  • Temperatures are falling in the South and I very much approve of that since I don’t like the summer heat. As a Leo, I know I should like sunshine, but I much prefer falling leaves and snow storms. I must admit, though, that as I grow older, cold weather bothers me more.
  • As I fight against the stomach infection I got in June from unknown sources, I see that even after two rounds of antibiotics (along with green tea), the old medication Tagament that cured my stomach when this first happened years ago may prove to be the most effective. When I first had it, it was a prescription drug. Now it’s OTC. I’m feeling better.
  • It’s been interesting noting the difference between “Chicago Fire” and the older series “Emergency.” The fire trucks on “Emergency” hit the burning structure with water immediately while “Chicago Fire” sends firefighters into the burning building first to search for those trapped and/or injured without charging up a hose. The “Chicago Fire” approach makes for good drama but intuitively looks like a wrong-headed way to fight fires. My own experience comes from a hands-on Navy fire fighting school. And yes, we learned that water will put out an oil fire.
  • I’m happy to see that Hope Clark, a long-time force behind the site Funds for Writers, is maintaining a high-impact novelist career with her books, The Carolina Slade Mysteries,  The Edisto Island Mysteries, and The Craven County Mysteries. The books are compelling and well-written, If you haven’t found them yet, you have gems awaiting you. I enjoy these books that are set in the South where Hope lives with her husband who was in law enforcement. Each of the series has believable characters fighting against real problems.

–Malcolm

Potpourri for Saturday, September 9th

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Potpourri, writing
  • My stomach infection is about four months old because the GP decided to refer me to a specialist whose first available appointment was two months away. When I complained, the GP did a test, found an infection, and gave me antibiotics. They seemed to be working but the infection came back after they ran their course. I didn’t tell him because by now, I was at the specialist’s practice. She ran an upper GI which came back normal, then sent me back to the lab for the same test the GP ran many weeks ago. I like the specialist, but think the infection would be gone for good if the GP had handled the whole process. I love modern medicine. <g>
  • I guess I’m watching “Yellowstone” because all my regular shows are still off for the summer and/or stalemated by the actors’ and writers’ strikes. The series is gritty and well-written but seems to be composed of all the possible cliches about life in Montana, including large ranchers being evil, the rez being a bad place, and all levels of state and tribal government being corrupt. I hate to say that I’ve become addicted.
  • I liked Jeff Shaara’s historical novel about Teddy Roosevelt called Old Lion. Very readable, and also compelling even for those of us who’ve read TR biographies such as  Mornings on Horseback. Up to now, Shaara’s novels have focussed on wars and battles. I guess he finally ran out of wars to write about. His battlefield novels are always told via the points of view of some of the major players. It took me a while to adjust to an omniscient narrator point of view in a Shaara novel.
  • Years ago, I learned that food poisoning was a “great way” to lose weight. As it turns out, so is a stomach infection. They work faster than all those diet plans advertised on TV.  They’re a no pain, no loss kind of thing.
  • Well, it seems that most of the books I want to read haven’t come down in price yet. So, I’m re-reading many of my Kathy Reichs (Bones) thrillers, including her 1997 novel Déjà Dead. These are well-written and compelling even if you’ve read them before because there’s no way one can remember all the plots and subplots. Since her novels stem from her profession, one learns a lot about dead people and morgues. Like the TV series, the Temperance Brenan in the books likes skipping out of the lab and investigating what the police seem slow to focus on. Déjà Dead is her first novel. If you read enough of these, you’ll become well-versed in Quebecois profanity that you don’t hear in France such as “Tabernac.”
  • Nice to see a little rain today in NW Georgia.

–Malcolm, author of “Conjure Woman’s Cat”

‘Devil Bones’ by Kathy Reichs

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

After my focus on Oppenheimer,  John Nash, the fires in Hawai’i, and quantum mechanics, it was a joy to go back to simpler books about chopped-up bodies, serial killers, and the other nefarious deeds Kathy Reichs (Bones) writes about in her crime/thriller series about a forensic anthropologist. This time I went back in time to an older novel from 2008, Devil Bones. It has a pentagramme on the cover that tells you whether or not this is your kind of book.

Here’s a real-life tip. If you’re working on an old house and discover a deep root cellar, don’t go down there. Since this is a wholesome family blog, I won’t tell you what’s down there in the novel even though the publisher’s description spills the beans about that.

From the Publisher

“In a house under renovation, a plumber uncovers a cellar no one knew about and makes a grisly discovery: a decapitated chicken, animal bones, and cauldrons containing beads, feathers, and other relics of religious ceremonies. In the center of the shrine rests the skull of a teenage girl. Meanwhile, on a nearby lakeshore, the headless body of a teenage boy is found by a man walking his dog.

“Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is called in to investigate, and a complex and gripping tale unfolds. Nothing is clear—neither when the deaths occurred, nor where. Was the skull brought to the cellar or was the girl murdered there? Why is the boy’s body remarkably well preserved? Led by a preacher turned politician, citizen vigilantes blame devil worshippers and Wiccans, and Temperance will need all of her expertise to get to the real culprit first.”

I smile when I read these kinds of descriptions because I don’t believe in the devil and wonder just what the hell those who believe they are devil worshippers think they’re doing.

—Malcolm

Sunday’s mixed bag

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Potpourri
  • Don’t let the smile fool you

    Author Pat Bertram posted an interesting piece on her blog today called “Pain Management,” in which she talked about the problem of doctors prescribing lower than needed doses of opioids so that patients have to live in pain and/or the issue of pharmacies’ refusing to fill prescriptions because they think they have a right to second guess what’s on the script. I know the problem in spades. My wife and I have both been yelled at by doctors who didn’t like the meds other doctors were prescribing. (We yelled back.) We’ve fought medication-related battles with doctors and pharmacies many times, so I was tempted to write a post about it. Turns out, the subject makes me too angry to write about coherently.

  • Aw, China is ticked off about our shooting down its weather balloon.
  • I’m enjoying another Kathy Reichs novel, Grave Secrets. It’s been fun, but I think the novel suffers from too many plots. Here’s the blurb on the novel’s Amazon page: “They are ‘the disappeared,’ twenty-three massacre victims buried in a well in the Guatemalan village of Chupan Ya two decades ago. Leading a team of experts on a meticulous, heartbreaking dig, Tempe Brennan pieces together the violence of the past. But a fresh wave of terror begins when the horrific sounds of a fatal attack on two colleagues come in on a blood-chilling satellite call. Teaming up with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolome Galiano and Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe quickly becomes enmeshed in the cases of four privileged young women who have vanished from Guatemala City—and finds herself caught in deadly territory where power, money, greed, and science converge.”
  • I don’t understand how one political party says “there is no border crisis,” in spite of news reports like this one from the Associated Press, “A surge in migration from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua in September brought the number of illegal crossings to the highest level ever recorded in a fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.” And. the opposition party says it has no solution. This is why I don’t trust the two major parties.
  • The photo at the top of my blog is a stand of sea oats, a protected plant in Florida. I’m very fond of them because I saw them so often while more or less living at the Gulf coast while growing up.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of novels primarily set in Montana and Florida.

Kathy Reichs’ ‘Fatal Voyage’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

In working my way through Kathy Reichs’ forensic thrillers, I’ve reached Fatal Voyage with only a few more pages to read. Her books are well-written, educational, and almost always place the main character, Tempe Brennan, in dangerous situations.

I especially liked this novel because it was set in and around Bryson City, NC, an area I’ve been visiting since the 1950s. It’s fun to see how an author views an area I know well, from Mt. Mitchell to  Clingman’s Dome, to New Found Gap. I’ve hiked through a lot of the area and driven through all of it. Reichs uses the towns and mountains well, adding a lot of local color (real and fictional). One of my brothers used to own several tracts of land near Dillsboro. I once tried to buy an old restaurant in Dillsboro but the plan got vetoed by somebody I won’t name here.

From the publisher

“Buckle up and take this voyage,” says People. The journey begins with Temperance Brennan hearing shocking news on her car radio. An Air TransSouth flight has gone down in the mountains of western North Carolina, taking with it eighty-eight passengers and crew. As a forensic anthropologist and a member of the regional DMORT team, Tempe rushes to the scene to assist in body recovery and identification.

“As bomb theories abound, Tempe soon discovers a jarring piece of evidence that raises dangerous questions—and gets her thrown from the DMORT team. Relentless in her pursuit of its significance, Tempe uncovers a shocking, multilayered tale of deceit and depravity as she probes her way into frightening territory—where someone wants her stopped in her tracks.”

She doesn’t mention all the moonshine stills in the area, one of which was on or near my brother’s property. A free jar of shine would have ensured our silence if we’d ever found one of the stills. Of course, we might have ended up dead, something that happens a lot in Fatal Voyage.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of magical realism, paranormal, and contemporary fantasy novels and short stories. This Kindle “boxed set” includes all four novels of the Florida Folk Magic Series a savings over buying them separately. You can, of course, can also buy them in hardcover, paperback, and audiobook editions.

Sunday’s mixed bag of stuff

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Potpourri
  • Rainy and wet today here in Northwest Georgia. Robbie, our indoor/outdoor kitty is inside. He must know that heavier rain is coming. All in all, a good day to stay inside and work on the next novel in my Florida Folk Magic Series set in Tallahassee and a fictional town near the Apalachicola River. Perhaps there’ll even be something fun to watch on TV tonight like, hmm, another episode of “Swamp People” on the History Channel.
  • I thoroughly enjoyed reading Cormac McCarthy’s latest novel The Passenger. It’s different from such classics as Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses, but just as powerful and well-written. I agree with Ron Charles’ assessment in The Washington Post that, “McCarthy has assembled all the chilling ingredients of a locked-room mystery. But he leaps outside the boundaries of that antique form, just as he reworked the apocalypse in The Road… Western knows he’s suspected of something, but he’s not told what. The two men who repeatedly question him never drop their formal politeness—never flash a bolt gun like Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men—but Western knows that his life is in danger and that he must run… The style—a mingling of profound contemplation and rapid-fire dialogue, always without quotation marks and often without attribution—is pure McCarthy.” I haven’t bought Stella Maris, the companion novel yet, but I will.
  • The Guardian story about the police murder in Memphis is headlined: “Tyre Nichols’s death after police encounter was ‘failing of basic humanity’, says Memphis chief.” The newspaper notes that there were 1,176 “police-involved” killings in 2022. The daily news routinely includes a police atrocity like this or a mass shooting by some thug from the community. Many newspapers and commentators say that inflation or possibly problems at the U.S./Mexico border are the country’s top news stories. They’re wrong, I think. Violence ought to be at the top of the list.
  • No, I don’t plan to watch the upcoming Super Bowl Game. I haven’t cared for years, though if the Atlanta Falcons were playing, I might watch. I tend to watch college football, especially if the Florida State University Seminoles are playing. They had a decent season, though not as good as the University of Georgia’s Dawgs, a team I only root for when they’re playing the University of Florida Gators.
  • Okay, I’m still addicted to Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan books and have three on order to read before getting to Stella Maris. I hope all of you are reading quality books these days.

–Malcolm

All four novels in the Florida Folk Magic Series are available in one Kindle volume, a nice savings.

Potpourri for January 10th

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books
  • How the hell did it happen. Joan Baez, whom I had a school-boy crush on years ago, is now 82. I approved of her songs, and her anti-war stance, but not her relationship with Bob Dylan. While she can’t hit the high notes the way she did when she was young, I will like to hear her sing.
  • Somehow, being too lazy to change the channel, we ended up watching the Georgia-TCU game on TV last night as the Dawgs won 65-7. I’m not really a fan of the Dawgs because I’m an Atlantic Coast Conference person and really think the SEC is trailer trash. But the Dawgs did everything right and the Horned Frogs basically didn’t do anything. The game would have been more interesting if it had been a close one.
  • I enjoyed Lydia Sherrer’s Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus. I left a four-star review on Amazon here. This book is the first in a series of seven and really seemed more like two short stories than a novel. While the novel has been advertised as the new Harry Potter, it doesn’t have the strong plot of the Potter series.
  • I’m a bit frightened of the controls in our 2019 Honda HRV because the dashboard has buttons for stuff I’ve never heard of. This is the first car we’ve owned where we had to keep looking stuff up in the manual. I don’t care for the setting that tells me whether I’m centered in the lane or the warning buzzers that remind me to shift into Park when I turn off the engine or to fasten my seatbelt. I try to avoid pushing most of the buttons.
  • My brother Barry sent me a three-novel Mickey Spillane book for Christmas. I’ve been aware of Mike Hammer, but never got around to reading “One Lonely Night,” “The Big Kill,” or “Kiss Me, Deadly.” Good noir stuff.
  • I think that whatever the hell’s inside a toilet tank is made in hell because it randomly breaks for no apparent reason, forcing one to buy a new one (also made in hell) and install it with the worse curses on the planet. At least our secondary bathroom is functional again, though we probably won’t trust it for a while. While looking at the problem, it appeared that the water was going into the closet in the next room rather than the septic tank. It wasn’t, but emptying out an entire closet was the last thing we needed in the middle of the night. Maybe this will make a good short story, “Hell’s Toilet.”
  • I continue to be addicted to Kathy Reich’s Temperance Brennan series, enabled by family members who gave me some new novels for Christmas. Just finished two more and need a pickup truck filled with new books.

–Malcolm

The bodies are stacked up like cordwood

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn issues

That’s what happens when you read a Kathy Reichs novel, the current one from back in the 1990s, Death Du Jour. Reichs, of course, is a forensic anthropologist as well as the author of the well-received Tempe Brennan series, so when she gets up close and personal with the bones in the lab, she’s been there and one that in “real life.”

So, in many ways, reading these novels is like walking where Reichs has walked even though the books are fiction. They’re windows into another world and, while they make good reading, they look at a world that makes me doubt the sanity of the human race. As the bodies stack up like cordwood in these books, we see just how many horrific ways there are for killing another person–not counting war and so-called acts of God.

I think this snippet of dialogue from “Terminator 2” sums up my despair:

John Connor: We’re not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean.

The Terminator: It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.

John Connor: Yeah. Major drag, huh?

I think the jury’s still out when it comes to deciding whether we’re going to destroy ourselves and our planet. My view of reality is fairly dark. Maybe that’s why I read books that make that view darker

What about you? When you read police thrillers, black ops, and other novels do you move on easily at the end of the book with the thought that the story was “just fiction” or do you worry about whether the story is telling us something about ourselves?

I worry about ourselves because the realistic stories in novels aren’t coming from some other world where trust and honesty and a long life expectancy don’t exist. I grew up in a place where the KKK was thicker than rattlesnakes, so that’s what I write about. Even though I’m writing about the 1950s, I wonder about the Jim Crow racism that’s still alive and “well” now.

The klan and its supporters knew how to stack up the dead. I want to turn my back on it, but I started the Florida Folk Magic Series and am not willing to move on to something that could air on the Hallmark Channel. I suspect Kathy Reichs couldn’t either. How she kept her sanity as a forensic anthropologist, we’ll never know. Perhaps, the novels are a good kind of therapy.

I’m not so sure. I wonder how many black stories one can view before one becomes immune to the horror of them. As long as we’re not immune, those of us who write and those of us who read, perhaps there’s still hope for people.

–Malcolm

Sunday’s Miscellany

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general
  • I’ve started another Kathy Reichs book, this one titled The Bone Code, and am finding these fun to read. Booklist says this 2021 novel is “A-game Reichs, with crisp prose, sharp dialogue, and plenty of suspense.” It’s a nice change of pace from Dan Brown’s Inferno which I just re-read and a welcome distraction from the mid-1950s resources about the KKK in Florida (mentioned in yesterday’s post). Hmm, it feels a bit warped saying a book about the autopsies of badly messed up people (think of the TV show “Bones”) is a lightweight distraction from KKK atrocities.
  • It appears that using Grammarly is making my bad spelling and copy editing worse because now I don’t have to try to spell the words right when an approximation of the word brings me the correct spelling out of nowhere.
  • I’m happy to report that after four days, our new Black & Decker drip coffee maker is still working. In years past, I used to write the birth and death dates of our coffee makers on the engagement calendar to track how long they lasted. Yes, I know, in this Internet age, we’re totally old-fashioned using an engagement calendar. I suppose the fact that I use this kind of coffee pot with Maxwell House coffee is another habit that proves I’m old-fashioned. But then, what do you expect from an old guy?
  • Here’s an example of writing about one’s traumas in order to help people suffering through similar experiences: “She survived a mass shooting — then created a graphic novel to help others.” More and more writers and readers seem to be discovering this truth nowadays. “It took Kindra Neely years to seek help. Seven years ago, she survived the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, where a gunman killed eight students and one professor, and injured eight more. She has now shared her experience in a debut graphic novel, Numb to This: Memoir of a Mass Shooting, hoping that it will help others.”
  • As most of you know, I’m cheap and buy swill-level red wine at the grocery short for $10 or less for a 1.5 L size. So it bothers me when the Biltmore House tempts me with a wine sale that includes free shipping from Asheville. I’m not a fan of the so-called standard 750 ml bottle because it’s an expensive way to buy wine. And yet, Cardinal’s Crest is my favorite. We’ve been going to the Biltmore Estate since the 1980s and always stop by the winery to stock up on good stuff to drink. We don’t go for the wine, of course, but for the beauty of the estate and the history and architecture of the Biltmore House. If you’re ever in Asheville, NC, you must stop by this wonderful tourist destination for a visit even though it’s a bit pricey. It’s well worth the time and cost

–Malcolm