Dr. Temperance Brennan is having a bad day, and she hasn't even gotten to work at the Medical Examiner's office yet. And when Detective Erskine "Skinny" Slidell swings by to pick her up in the courthouse parking ramp, where she's locked her keys, purse and shoes in her car, the day just gets worse. Slidell was at the ME's office with the body of a hit-and-run victim. Brennan gets dragged in to that case, even though she had a few others on her roster. The victim, female in her teens, has no ID, and examination shows she was most likely raped and murdered. Brennan's specialty is forensic anthropology, so she shouldn't even be working this case, but the outrage she develops at the fate of the victim will not let her leave the case unsolved.
At the same time she's been asked to determine whether three mummy-wrapped packages confiscated by customs at the local airport do, indeed, contain bones of dogs, or if the importer is smuggling valuable Peruvian artifacts.
As if she doesn't have enough to keep her busy, her almost-ex husband asks her, as a favor to him and a good friend, to be the expert on site during an exhumation of two Afghani locals who were killed under questionable circumstances a year previously. Brennan's examination and testimony could clear the friend's nephew, a Marine accused of shooting the unarmed men in the back.
Phew!
The good news is that this is a good read. The pace never lags, the story lines work together in a tightly-woven plot and there are enough little twists thrown in to keep the reader second-guessing the outcome. Is it great literature? Well, no, but that's okay. It is well-written and entertaining. Oh, and be sure to read the last few pages of the book "From the Forensic Files of Dr. Kathy Reichs" -- but not until you've finished the story.
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