Brennan Reads the Bones Again, Still Making Stupid Decisions... or Deadly Decisions
Only two things in this world, an old saw would have us believe, are inevitable -- one of them is the taxman's visit. Few (if any) among us will voluntarily admit to fascination with the inner workings of the tax system, and equally few can honestly profess a lack of interest in that other inevitability, Death. Given that old Thanatos will be the last being any of us encounters in this world, such a macabre interest is perhaps to be expected.
As much as anything else, said fascination probably explains the popularity of the murder mystery genre. Certainly we relish tales of the hunt and the delicious shiver that attacks us in the safety of our armchairs when we contemplate the evils of a serial killer. We remain drawn to the remarkable Sherlockian talents of the protagonist, be s/he P-I, cop, or common citizen; young or old; male or female.
The current generation of detectives -- those modern-day Holmeses -- have for the most part come to rely increasingly on technology, on science, to provide the assistance necessary to capture the "perp," as TV detectives might say. In recent years, then, a subset of the mystery genre has grown up dealing with the half-cop, half-scientists who collect and analyze evidence of the dirty deed. Witness, for example, Jeffery Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme novels (and movie,The Bone Collector) or the US television series "CSI," both of which deal with crime-scene investigators.
But the most fascinating, and gruesome, aspect of a murder mystery is and always has been reserved for those who would seek clues within the victim's body: the medical examiner. First came television's irascible "Quincy, M.E." (played by a post-Oscar Madison Jack Klugman), than came Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta, adding a woman's touch to a profession that's frankly not for the squeamish among us. Last, but not least, now making her third appearance on the scene, is Temperance "Tempe" Brennan. A specialist among specialists, Brennan's anthropology studies took a detour into forensics and never looked back. Like her creator, Kathy Reichs, Tempe is called to the scene when naught but bones remains to speak for the dead.
An Explosive Opening
Tempe's current assignment is to assemble a grisly jigsaw puzzle: two members of a motorcycle gang were within inches of a bomb when it went off, and Tempe's putting the pieces back together. As if that's not enough, the two were identical twins -- making the task like assembling one of those thousand-piece all-white jigsaw puzzles, only in this case it's an all-red puzzle.
Montreal (site of Tempe's labors) is in the throes of a gang war: rival biker clans are shooting it out in the streets and bars and in their clubhouses. Seeing that it's mainly scumballs killing other scumballs, most people are inclined to let 'em keep it up until there's no one left standing. There's only one problem: "collateral" damage; in this case a nine-year-old girl on her way to ballet class. That makes the citizens (and the police) mad. When Tempe's called into the case to locate the decade-old graves of two murdered biker hangers-on, she's startled to find a partial set of of an unexpected third victim -- those of a teenaged girl, unrelated to the other two. And that starts Tempe on a hunt that just might really mess up her life.
Private Lives
Tempe's personal life is (as always) in an uproar. The cop with whom she's slowly developing a relationship has just been indicted on drug and counterfeiting charges. Her nineteen-year-old nephew, Kit, also just stumbled into town to crash at her condo for a couple of weeks, and it appears that he's a bit of a biker hanger-on himself. At least Tempe's daughter Katie is away from the action on Semester at Sea, and she doesn't have to deal with her wacky sister Harry (whom we met in Death du Jour). Sister Harry's not on the scene this time, although her son Kit could use a little parenting.
Gee, What a Coincidence!
The teenager's partial set of bones leads Tempe to North Carolina in the States -- a striking coincidence, since Tempe just happens to spend half her time in Charlotte. Those bones connect to an old missing-persons case, that of a young girl who disappeared more than fifteen years ago, at about the same time as a biker confab in nearby Myrtle Beach. The DNA match is definitive, but how the heck did just three bones get hundreds of miles away to Montreal while the rest were found buried in North Carolina?
Reichs takes Tempe on a merry chase working to ferret out how the young woman died and how her bones got moved, while at the same time investigating what merely seems to be yet another in the series of biker killings. All the while, she's getting more and more worried about her wayward nephew. He's getting guttural, almost incomprehensible (but criminal-sounding) phone messages from some guy named "Preacher" and hanging around in less than savory bars until all hours of the night. What's an auntie to do? Not to mention that Kit seems to have developed a strange friendship with a smarmy TV news anchor who makes Tempe's teeth hurt.
And so Tempe flits back and forth between Montreal and North Carolina, wheedles DNA tests out of lovestruck technicians, dithers about her not-quite-lover Ryan (the indicted cop), worries about a friend who had a stroke, and still finds time to solve not one but two murder mysteries. And we thought Lynda Carter was Wonder Woman!
And My Teeth Hurt, Too
Deadly Decisions is Reich's third Tempe Brennan novel. Reichs burst on the scene a few years back with the well-done Deja Dead, then followed it up with the somewhat pedestrian Death du Jour. All her titles -- as befits Tempe's half-and-half life in Montreal and Charlotte -- are bilingual (you can't see it, but there's an accent aigue on the 'e' in Decisions). Brennan's a brilliant scientist, a fine mother, and otherwise only barely functional: her personal life is eternally a mess, and she makes some pretty stupid decisions of her own when it comes to ignoring the suggestions of the police about investigating on her own. She ain't no Kay Scarpetta in that respect, but then Tempe has a hate-hate relationship with Inspector Claudel instead of Kay's love-hate relationship with her Lt. Marino.
Reichs displays two weaknesses in this novel: the first is over-reliance on coincidence, especially the stupendous coincidence that finds related crimes at both ends of Tempe's frequent-flyer route. That wouldn't be so bad had there not also been interrelated crimes in Montreal and North Carolina in the previous Brennan novel, Death du Jour: second time's not a charm! The second weakness is in plot continuity: at least twice I had to scan backwards to the beginning of a chapter to figure out the identity of a character referenced near the end of the chapter; both times it was apparent only from careful reading of context. Several of the characters who play fairly important roles in the novel simply appear almost magically. In particular, one character (Jocelyn) figures prominently in Tempe's case; yet she suddenly appears as a clerk in Tempe's laboratory without rhyme or reason; no back story, not even an offhand introduction as "the new clerk."
Reichs also has her brilliant scientist making some truly unwise decisions, such as choosing to do a little "detective work" in a biker bar during a gang war. On her own. Without backup. At night... Movie critic Roger Ebert might have called this one a "Stupid Forensic Anthropologist" plot.
Reichs displayed better plotting, and better sense for her protagonist, in her first novel (which was set entirely in Montreal if I remember aright). In the course of her three novels, she has constructed a likable, though ditsy, protagonist in Tempe. Reichs -- herself a forensic anthropologist -- also does a bang-up job of getting the science across. In this novel, for instance, there's a fascinating and well-written discussion of the science of blood spatter.
My recommendation? the first Tempe Brennan mystery (Deja Dead) would receive my coveted four-star rating; the second (Death du Jour) was a borderline two. This one's a borderline three stars (about two-point-six, to be exact). Reichs, in my book, needs to work more on her writing craft, even if it means cutting back to a novel every eighteen months instead of once a year.
A somewhat below average mystery novel -- read it only if you're intent on reading Reich's entire catalog.