206 Bones (Temperance Brennan Series #12)

There are 206 bones in the human body. And one shattering secret hidden among them. . . .

Cold and alone, bound hands to feet, Tempe Brennan regains consciousness locked in a dark cell--or is she buried alive in a tomb?--and begins to reconstruct the twisted chain of events that led her to this terrifying place. Tempe and Lieutenant Ryan had recently accompanied the remains of a missing heiress from Montreal to the Chicago morgue, and suddenly Tempe is accused of mishandling the autopsy. After an incriminating phone call and another shocking death, Tempe's unseen enemy closes in--even as the corpse of a second, and then a third, elderly woman turns up in the woods of Montreal. Who wants Tempe dead, or at least out of the way, and why? Who would resort to sabotage to destroy the secrets hidden in the bones? Only Tempe can uncover the truth--if she can escape the deadly fate someone has designed for her.

The New York Times - Marilyn Stasio

Reichs isn't above a bit of melodrama, and her heroine is metaphorically tied to the tracks at one awkward juncture—until the forensic procedures take center stage, as they always do in this cleverly plotted and expertly maintained series.

Kathy Reichs burst onto the fiction scene in the late 1990s with her first novel, Déjà Dead, a thriller rooted in an expert knowledge of science and medicine and powered by a strong female protagonist, Temperance Brennan. Since then, Reichs has been a regular feature on bestseller lists and is often mentioned in the same breath as the chief of the autopsy whodunit, Patricia Cornwell.