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Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs

© Catten Ely

Kathy Reichs's novel Grave Secrets opens with this dedication:

For the innocents:

Guatemala
1962-1996

New York, New York
Arlington, Virginia
Shanksville, Pennsylvania
September 11, 2001

I have touched their bones. I mourn for them.

For those not yet familiar with this ambitious author, Reichs, like the character in her books, Tempe Brennan, is a forensic anthropologist for the North Carolina medical examiner. She also works for the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légals in Quebec, and is a professor of anthropology at eh University of North Carolina (Charlotte). And she is one of 50 forensic anthropologists certified in the US by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology.

This woman is busy!

And yet she turns out novels on the side - and good ones at that. In Grave Secrets, Tempe works with a group to identify the victims of a mass murder by soldiers in the Guatemalan village of Chupan Ya twenty years before.

Things are never simple, though, and she is soon sought out and consulted by Guatemalan police on a local case: Can she help them identify remains found in a septic tank? And would she help recover them as well? "Oook," is right. Reichs does such a good job describing the retrieval of the body that the reader feels a bit repulsed. Be prepared for plenty of details.

Then another mystery spins into view. Four girls are missing in Guatemala City and this recovered body might be one of them. There are tenuous connections at first, and Tempe soon discovers that working in another country brings its own challenges to an investigation.

When two members of Tempe's team of forensic anthropologists at the Chupan Ya site are attacked, things become even hairier. Throw in a love interest or two to futher complicate the mix, and you have a pretty good read.

Reichs's pacing is, as always, just right. He characters are strong and well-built, and the plot is intriguing enough to keep most readers engaged. She includes a map in the front of the book for people like me - the geographically challenged. The science is the best part, in my opinion, and a reader can tell she knows her stuff. I always put one of Reichs's novels down when I'm finished and wonder how much is autobiographical and how much is pure fiction.

I admit this book was a little slower than previous ones and the subject of mass identifications would have been more interesting if it were closer to home (American egocentrism at its worst, I'm afraid).