Jon Morgan is a retired police Superintendent and francophile who, it is said, has consequently seen almost everything awful that people can do to each other. He relishes quality writing in all genres but advises particularly on police procedure for authors including John Harvey and Jon McGregor. Haunts bookshops both new and secondhand and stands with Erasmus: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I may buy food and clothes.”
In this 19th
outing for Temperance Brennan, finds herself in dispute with the new ME
(Coroner in UK speak) who has replaced her late boss. She is frozen out of an
investigation of a body found partly dismembered and eaten by ‘wild hogs.’
The ME’s partiality,
incompetence and media-seeking personality lead the apparently maverick
Temperance, (who is not terribly stable due to an aneurysm in her brain, as
well as a septuagenarian mother who is an autodidact computer genius) to investigate
the death, ‘off book’. All done with the help of various police and ME office
friends, working together to identify the ‘John Doe’ and bring the bad guys to
justice for various crimes and misdemeanours.
Along the way we are
treated to an investigation of various abandoned nuclear fallout shelters and
missile silos, and a glimpse at the dark side of the all American dream, the
vagaries of the US justice system and a peek at new forensic techniques.
The book itself is
written from the perspective of Temperance with a sub-Chandler, interior
monologue style. It is quite readable, if not always immediately
comprehensible, and its premise is probably quite plausible.
If I read, however, a
‘thoughts tapping at my subconscious’ type comment, once, I must have read it
half a dozen times – possibly more! Ultimately, there was something about it
that kept me wanting to read to the very end. Possibly because the denouement
came in about three staggered stages.
This is not a series
I would have started had I not been sent this book, but enjoyable in a self-flagellatory
sort of way. I don’t think I will be reading the other 18 in a hurry!
I have to confess that although I
was aware of Churchill’s dictum that the US and UK are two nations divided by a
common language, I did not expect, apart from the annoyance of the usual US
spelling quirks of harbor, flavor, offense etc, to have to have a dictionary to
hand when reading the book. Groddy? (sleazy disgusting), I have no idea about
the ‘Nebulon Frigate’. I did learn what
‘taphophobia’ means though!
As with the heroine, Temperance
Brennan, the author is forensic anthropologist for the Offices of the Chief
Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, and for the Laboratorie de Sciences
Judiciaires et de Medecine Legale for the province of Quebec. She divides her
time between Charlotte and Montreal and is a frequent expert witness.
