Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs

Audio CD, 0 pages
Published August 24th 2010 by Simon & Schuster Audio (first published 2010)
ISBN 1442304340 (ISBN13: 9781442304345)
Source: Purchased

The Blurb (www.goodreads.com):

When Tempe is called to the scene of an autoerotic death, she has little idea of the tangled chain of events that will follow. Because the man whose body she examines apparently died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam 40 years before. So who is buried in the soldier's grave?

I love the Tempe Brennan books. I have almost all of them on audio, and they are great books for long car rides. Tempe's latest adventure takes her from Canada to North Carolina to Hawaii and back again, and I'm not sure but I think this may be the first case she works that actually spans both countries.

Tempe is called to the scene of a death that takes place in a pond in the middle of the Canadian countryside, and the specifics surrounding that death are a little less than conventional. However, they ID the body as a US citizen, and former soldier, who supposedly died in combat 40 years ago, and who is supposedly buried in North Carolina. The exhumation of that body leads Tempe to JPAC, the military organization responsible for making sure our men and women in uniform make it home, no matter what.

Reichs is great at setting up a multidimensional mystery. I don't want to say too much about it, because I know I wouldn't be able to do it justice without possibly ruining the ending.

There are a few things I will say:

I learned a lot about the military's devotion to ID'ing it's personnel killed in action and making sure they make it home. I actually found myself looking up a lot of the acronyms and reading about the JPAC online.

There was a the usual dry humor I've grown to expect from Tempe. Her lighthearted internal monologue amuses me.

I love the science that is randomly inserted into the story line. You don't see enough real science in books these days. Usually when I read books that have a scientist as a character, the "science" they talk about makes me want to tear my eyes out.

This book didn't have the suspense and sense of danger the last couple had. I didn't really get the feeling that her life was truly in danger that I would have expected. That's not to say there was no suspense, because there was. It just wasn't the "who buried Tempe in a cave" kind of suspense, like what was in the last book.

Overall, I highly recommend the series. It's still going strong and I'm looking forward to the next installment.

And Spiderbones adds a notch in my "Off the Shelf" Challenge. 4 down, 11 to go!