Nothing says ‘just one more chapter’ quite like human remains in a septic tank.
I finished Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs at 1 a.m. this morning. That should probably tell you everything you need to know about the rating.
I enjoy Kathy Reichs' books immensely. Give me a strong, intelligent female lead, plenty of forensic science, a complicated mystery, and an author who can keep me three steps behind until she's good and ready to show her cards, and I'm a happy reader. Apparently, I'm also a reader who doesn't need sleep.
This time, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is in Guatemala, helping excavate the remains of 23 people who were "disappeared" during the country's brutal civil war in the early 1980s. It's grim, heartbreaking work, and the fact that the story is rooted in Guatemala's very real history gives this book considerably more weight than your average murder mystery.
But Tempe is a classic overachiever. One collection of human remains is apparently not enough. She's asked to consult on another investigation involving four young women who have disappeared without a trace. Then human remains turn up in a septic tank.
Yes. A septic tank.
I'm just going to give you a moment with that.
Reichs does what she does so well here: she gives us multiple investigations, piles on the forensic evidence, explains the science without making me feel like I accidentally signed up for a graduate-level anthropology course, and somehow makes me believe I'm keeping up with Tempe.
I wasn't.
I happily followed her around Guatemala, collecting clues and learning fascinating things about bones, decomposition, identification, and forensic anthropology, while Reichs quietly stayed several steps ahead of me. I didn't figure out how everything fit together, and I didn't particularly want to. Half the fun of a Tempe Brennan novel is watching all those seemingly disconnected pieces finally click into place.
There's also something especially powerful about the setting and the cases Reichs chose to bring together. Tempe is helping recover and identify people someone tried to erase from history while young women are disappearing in the present. The past and present sit uncomfortably close to each other throughout the story, giving the mystery an emotional weight beyond simply figuring out whodunit.
And through all of it, Tempe remains exactly the kind of protagonist I love. She's smart, capable, curious, stubborn, and very human. She doesn't magically know the answers. She follows the evidence, trusts the science, asks questions, makes connections, and occasionally walks straight into situations that make me wonder whether forensic anthropologists come with a self-preservation setting that Tempe has simply turned off.
This proves to me that intelligence and common sense are sometimes mutually exclusive.
Grave Secrets had everything I want from Kathy Reichs: fascinating forensic science, a strong female lead, a complicated investigation, history woven into the mystery, and enough twists to keep me happily clueless until Reichs decided I was finally allowed to know what was going on.
And it kept me reading until 1 a.m.
Oh, well. I'll sleep when I'm dead.
