Fiction, Mystery & Crime, Fiction Subjects

Grave Secrets (Temperance Brennan Series #5)

Name: Grave Secrets (Temperance Brennan Series #5)
Author: Kathy Reichs
ISBN: 9780671028381

by Kathy Reichs

Available on Bookshop Write a review

Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.

Overview

"Fans of TV's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation should be in heaven" (People) stepping into the world of forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan, star of Kathy Reichs' electrifyingly authentic bestsellers.

A harrowing excavation unearths a chilling tragedy never laid to rest.

They are "the disappeared," twenty-three massacre victims buried in a well in the Guatemalan village of Chupan Ya two decades ago. Leading a team of experts on a meticulous, heartbreaking dig, Tempe Brennan pieces together the violence of the past. But a fresh wave of terror begins when the horrific sounds of a fatal attack on two colleagues come in on a blood-chilling satellite call. Teaming up with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolomé Galiano and Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe quickly becomes enmeshed in the cases of four privileged young women who have vanished from Guatemala City — and finds herself caught in deadly territory where power, money, greed, and science converge.

Synopsis

Summer, 1982: Soldiers enter a Guatemalan village and massacre its women and children. Today, families refer to their lost members as the disappeared. Enter Temperance Brennan, about to confront the most heartbreaking case of her career. Out of shadow graves fading clues emerge. Something savage happened in the highlands two decades ago. Is it happening again? Four girls are missing and a human rights investigator is murdered as Tempe listens to her screams on the phone. Will Tempe be the next victim? Weaving cutting-edge science into a chillingly realistic tale of suspense, Grave Secrets is Kathy Reichs' most accomplished novel yet.

Publishers Weekly

Fans of the Temperance Brennan series will be pleased by forensic anthropologist Reichs's latest installment (after Fatal Voyage; Deadly Decisions; etc.). Grave Secrets finds Tempe plying her pathology trade in Guatemala, investigating a massacre site as a favor to a Guatemalan anthropology association. However, when her team is ambushed by gunmen, Tempe finds herself ensnared in a mesh of corruption and murder stretching from Guatemala City to Montreal, involving DAs, military thugs and kinky diplomats. Tempe finds herself drawn and trapped between the two cops investigating: her longtime Canadian suitor, Lt. Andrew Ryan, and her would-be Latin lover, agente Bartolom Galiano. That the two men know each other and are friends doesn't help the situation. When a nosy reporter looking into the massacre is gunned down before Tempe's eyes, she realizes she herself is the next likely target. As has been said before, Reichs has much in common with Patricia Cornwell, though her language is more stripped down and there is less melodrama between autopsies. Devotees of medical procedurals will appreciate the detailed descriptions of bone formation and the mechanics of bodily decomposition within a septic tank; others may not. But the author keeps the twists coming, and by the novel's climax, she has skillfully interwoven her many subplots and red herrings into a satisfying puddle of sex, sleaze, greed and gore. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

About the Author, Kathy Reichs

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.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

Twenty years ago, soldiers stalked into a Guatemalan highlands village and executed everyone in sight, including women and children. Now, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan must dig into the shallow, hastily dug graves to search for unidentified victims. But while investigating this old massacre, Tempe begins to uncover evidence of a new one. What happened, she wonders, to the four missing girls of Guatemala City and who was the woman on the phone, screaming until her last breath? Another realistic and thoroughly chilling Kathy Reichs novel.

Publishers Weekly

Fans of the Temperance Brennan series will be pleased by forensic anthropologist Reichs's latest installment (after Fatal Voyage; Deadly Decisions; etc.). Grave Secrets finds Tempe plying her pathology trade in Guatemala, investigating a massacre site as a favor to a Guatemalan anthropology association. However, when her team is ambushed by gunmen, Tempe finds herself ensnared in a mesh of corruption and murder stretching from Guatemala City to Montreal, involving DAs, military thugs and kinky diplomats. Tempe finds herself drawn and trapped between the two cops investigating: her longtime Canadian suitor, Lt. Andrew Ryan, and her would-be Latin lover, agente Bartolom Galiano. That the two men know each other and are friends doesn't help the situation. When a nosy reporter looking into the massacre is gunned down before Tempe's eyes, she realizes she herself is the next likely target. As has been said before, Reichs has much in common with Patricia Cornwell, though her language is more stripped down and there is less melodrama between autopsies. Devotees of medical procedurals will appreciate the detailed descriptions of bone formation and the mechanics of bodily decomposition within a septic tank; others may not. But the author keeps the twists coming, and by the novel's climax, she has skillfully interwoven her many subplots and red herrings into a satisfying puddle of sex, sleaze, greed and gore. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan volunteers to help exhume and identify bodies from 20-year-old mass graves in Guatemala. Police investigator Galliano requests her assistance in a current case because of her experience with human remains found in septic tanks. Hard-boiled and formidable on the surface, Tempe underneath is a muddle of conflict and insecurity. Luckily, her colleagues don't have to listen to her querulous inner conversations concerning her loathing of death, her pride in her professional accomplishments, and her sexual attraction to two policemen who (she thinks) are comparing notes on her when she isn't around. Katherine Borowitz is an accomplished reader. She brings the listener through the stinky muck of sewers into the equally polluted world of Guatemalan politics. In her interpretation of Tempe, she portrays the heroine's uncompromising toughness through swift pacing and forceful consonants, her sympathy for the victims through a slower pace and rising inflections, and her inner battles with plaintive emphasis on key words. The setting is interesting, the plot suitably convoluted, and the reader true to the material. However, Tempe's inner wimp will exasperate hard-boiled mystery aficionados. Recommended for large mystery collections.-Juleigh Muirhead Clark, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Lib., Colonial Williamsburg Fdn., VA Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Invited to Guatemala to examine the remains of rural Mayan villagers executed over 20 years ago, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan doesn't know that her reconstruction of the brutal annihilation of Chupan Ya is only the prelude to a series of escalating horrors. First, Tempe's colleague Molly Carraway and her driver are ambushed on an isolated road; then Tempe is asked to analyze a grisly discovery made in the septic tank belonging to a little hotel in Guatemala City. Four young women, including Chantale Specter, the headstrong daughter of the Canadian ambassador, have gone missing from the capital over the past six months, and the corpse in the tank may provide evidence of a possible serial killer or consolation to the ambassador and his wife. But no sooner is Tempe ordered by her boss back in Quebec to undertake an examination than she's stonewalled by the very local authorities who'd asked for her participation. Nor does her brief time with the corpse yield any clues to the murderer's identity; the most remarkable findings, in fact, concern a telltale cat hair. A trip back to her home base in Quebec will provide some answers at the expense of raising others, and the range of felons and felonies will broaden with every gruesome discovery. Even Tempe's off-again romance with high-handed cop Andrew Ryan will be shaken by a new pursuer, Guatemala City Sgt. Bartolome Galiano, Ryan's old schoolmate. The impossibly busy plot, linking every felony in the Western Hemisphere over a generation, clogs Tempe's fifth (Fatal Voyage) as badly as that septic tank.