Cross Bones

Montreal-based forensic pathologist Temperance Brennan finds herself in Israel, trying to solve the murder of an antiquities dealer that may or may not be all about some two-thousand-year-old bones unearthed at Masada. The archaeology is deeply interesting, the plotting is tight, and Michele Pawk is borderline brilliant at adjusting the pace of her reading to reflect tension, excitement, or fear--you won't soon forget Tempe in a pitch-dark tomb with a panicked hyena. One quibble: Someone should have paid heed to French pronunciation, given that half the story takes place in French-speaking Canada. This publisher wouldn't print a book in which the word "musée" appears scores of times without its accent. Why does the audio merit less care? B.G. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

May 9, 2005
Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Tempe" Brennan gets caught in mysteries past and present when she's called in to determine if illegal antiquities dealer Avram Ferris's gunshot death is murder or suicide. An acquaintance of Avram suggests the former: he hands Tempe a photograph of a skeleton, taken in Israel in 1963, and insists it's the reason Avram is dead. Tempe's longtime boyfriend, Quebecois detective Andrew Ryan, is also involved with the case, so the duo head to Israel where they attempt to solve the murder and a mystery revolving around a first-century tomb that may contain the remains of the family of Jesus Christ. This find threatens the worldwide Christian community, the Israeli and Jewish hierarchy and numerous illegal antiquity dealers, any of whom might be out to kill Tempe and Ryan. Not that Tempe notices. She has the habit of being oblivious to danger, which quickly becomes annoying, as does Reichs's tendency to end chapters with a heavy-handed cliffhanger ("His next words sent ice up my spine"). The plot is based on a number of real-life anthropological mysteries, and fans of such will have a good time, though thriller readers looking for chills and kills may not find the novel quite as satisfying. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh.