206 Bones (Temperance Brennan Series #12)

by Kathy Reichs

Overview

#1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs delivers another “outstanding” book (Publishers Weekly) in her “cleverly plotted” (The New York Times) Temperance Brennan series, the inspiration for the hit FOX television series Bones.

There are 206 bones in the human body. Forensic anthropologists know them intimately, can use them to reconstruct every kind of violent end. When Tempe finds herself regaining consciousness in some kind of very small, very dark, very cold enclosed space—bound, hands to feet—Tempe begins slowly to reconstruct...

Tempe and Lieutenant Ryan had accompanied the recently discovered remains of a missing heiress from Montreal to the Chicago morgue. Suddenly, Tempe was accused of mishandling the autopsy—and the case. Back in Montreal, the corpse of a second elderly woman was found in the woods, and then a third. Seamlessly weaving between Tempe’s present-tense terror as she’s held captive and her memory of the cases of these murdered women, Reichs reveals the incredible devastation that would occur if a forensic colleague sabotaged work in the lab. The chemistry between Tempe and Ryan intensifies as this complex, riveting tale unfolds, proving once again, that Reichs is the dominant talent in forensic mystery writing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416525677
Publisher:	Pocket Star
Publication date:	06/22/2010
Series:	Temperance Brennan Series
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	46,478
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 6.70(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Kathy Reichs, like her character Dr. Temperance Brennan, is a forensic anthropologist, formerly for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina and currently for the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale for the province of Quebec. A professor in the department of anthropology at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, she is one of only ninety-nine forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. Reichs’s first book, Déjà Dead, catapulted her to fame when it became a New York Times bestseller and won the 1997 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel. Her latest Temperance Brennan novel, Bones of the Lost, was an instant New York Times bestseller. Her website is KathyReichs.com.

Hometown:

Charlotte, North Carolina and Montreal, Québec

Place of Birth:

Chicago, Illinois

Education:

B.A., American University, 1971; M.A., Ph.D., Northwestern University

Website:

http://kathyreichs.com/

Read an Excerpt

206 Bones

1

COLD.

Numb.

Confused.

I opened my eyes.

To dark. Black as arctic winter.

Am I dead?

Obeying some limbic command, I inhaled deeply.

Smells registered in my brain.

Mold. Musty earth. Something organic, hinting at the passage of time.

Was this hell? A tomb?

I listened.

Silence. Impenetrable.

But no. There were sounds. Air moving through my nostrils. Blood pounding in my ears.

Corpses don’t breathe. Dead hearts don’t beat.

Other sensations intruded. Hardness below me. Burning on the right side of my face.

I raised my head.

Bitter bile flooded my mouth.

I shifted my hips to relieve pressure on my twisted neck.

Pain exploded up my left leg.

A groan shattered the stillness.

Instinctively, my body went fetal. The pounding gained volume.

I lay curled, listening to the rhythm of my fear.

Then, recognition. The sound had come from my own throat.

I feel pain. I react. I am alive.

But where?

Spitting bile, I tried reaching out. Felt resistance. Realized my wrists were bound.

I flexed a knee toward my chest, testing. My feet rose as one. My wrists dropped.

I tried a second time, harder. Neurons again fired up my leg.

Stifling another cry, I struggled to force order onto my addled thinking.

I’d been bound, hands to feet, and abandoned. Where? When? By whom?

Why?

A memory search for recent events came up empty. No. The void in recollection was longer than that.

I remembered picnicking with my daughter, Katy. But that was summer. The frigid temperature now suggested that it must be winter.

Sadness. A last farewell to Andrew Ryan. That was October. Had I seen him again?

A bright red sweater at Christmas. This Christmas? I had no idea.

Disoriented, I groped for any detail from the past few days. Nothing stayed in focus.

Vague impressions lacking rational form or sequence appeared and faded. A figure emerging from shadow. Man or woman? Anger. Shouting. About what? At whom?

Melting snow. Light winking off glass. The dark maw of a cracked door.

Dilated vessels pounded inside my skull. Hard as I tried, I could not evoke recollection from my semiconscious mind.

Had I been drugged? Suffered a blow to the head?

How bad was my leg? If I managed to free myself, could I walk? Crawl?

My hands were numb, my fingers useless. I tried tugging my wrists outward. Felt no give in my bindings.

Tears of frustration burned the backs of my lids.

No crying!

Clamping my jaw, I rolled to my back, raised my feet, and jerked my ankles apart. Flames roared up my left lower limb.

Then I knew nothing.

I awoke. Moments later? Hours? No way to tell. My mouth felt drier, my lips more parched. The pain in my leg had receded to a dull ache.

Though I gave my pupils time, they took in nothing. How could they adjust? The dense blackness offered not a sliver of light.

The same questions flooded back. Where? Why? Who?

Clearly, I’d been abducted. To be the victim in some sick game? To be removed as a threat?

The thought triggered my first clear memory. An autopsy photo. A corpse, charred and twisted, jaws agape in a final agonal scream.

Then a kaleidoscope sequence, image chasing image. Two morgues. Two autopsy rooms. Name plaques marking two labs. Temperance Brennan, Forensic Anthropologist. Temperance Brennan, Anthropologue Judiciaire.

Was I in Charlotte? Montreal? Far too cold for North Carolina. Even in winter. Was it winter? Was I in Quebec?

Had I been grabbed at home? On the street? In my car? Outside the Édifice Wilfrid-Derome? Inside the lab?

Was my captor a random predator and I a random victim? Had I been targeted because of who I am? Revenge sought by a former accused? By a conspiracy-theorist next of kin? What case had I last been working?

Dear God, could it really be so cold? So dark? So still?

Why that smell, so disturbingly familiar?

As before, I tried wriggling my hands. My feet. To no avail. I was hog-tied, unable even to sit.

“Help! I’m here! Someone! Help me!”

Over and over I called out until my throat grew raw.

“Anyone! Please!”

My pleas went unanswered.

Panic threatened to overwhelm me.

You will not die helpless!

Trembling from cold and fear, and frantic to see, I shifted to my back and started bucking my hips, stretching my hands upward as far as possible, oblivious to the agony in my leg. One thrust. Two. Three. My fingertips scraped hardness little more than a foot above my face.

I lunged again. Made contact. Sediment cascaded into my eyes and mouth.

Spitting and blinking, I rolled onto my right side and shoved backward with one arm and both feet. The rough ground abraded the skin on my elbow and heels. One ankle screamed in protest. I didn’t care. I had to move. Had to get out.

I’d advanced a very short distance when I encountered a wall. Rectangular contours surrounded by mortar. Brick.

Heart hammering, I rolled to my other side and inched in the opposite direction. Again, I soon hit a wall.

Adrenaline flooded my body as terror piggybacked onto terror. My gut curdled. My lungs drew great heaving breaths.

My prison was no more than thirty inches high and six feet wide! Its length didn’t matter. Already I felt the walls pressing in.

I lost control.

Scooching forward, I began yelling and beating the brick with my fists. Tears streamed down my cheeks. Over and over I called out, hoping to attract the attention of a passerby. A worker. A dog. Anyone.

When my knuckles grew raw I attacked with the heels of my hands.

When I could no longer flail with my arms, I rolled and lashed out with my feet.

Pain ripped from my ankle. Too much pain. My calls for help morphed into agonized moans.

Defeated, I fell back, panting, sweat cooling on my icy flesh.

A parade of faces marched through my mind. Katy. Ryan. My sister, Harry. My cat, Birdie. My ex-husband, Pete.

Would I never see them again?

Great heaving sobs racked my chest.

Perhaps I lost consciousness. Perhaps not. My next awareness was of sound.

A noise outside my body. Not of my making.

I froze.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

A cerebral crack opened.

Memory slipped through.

Editorial Reviews

For forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, the 206 bones of the human body are the vocabulary of her work, the building blocks of evidence amassed to ultimately convict. In this crisp narrative, her pride in her work is undermined twice; first, when she is accused of mishandling an autopsy; second, when she regains consciousness in a small, totally darkened, very cold enclosure. "Bones" at her best.

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.
—The New York Times

Marilyn Stasio

As the 12th novel starring Dr. Temperance Brennan opens, the forensic anthropologist awakens to find herself entombed and tied up. While struggling to free herself, she recalls her most recent case, concerning a potential serial killer of elderly women, and her gradual awareness that an unknown enemy is trying to undermine her professionally and personally. Linda Emond ably embodies the brilliant but socially awkward Temperance. She makes a subtle but effective effort to indicate other voices and produces a convincing French accent when necessary (much of the action takes place in Montreal). Emond also ensures that the pace doesn't flag when Reichs takes quick timeouts from the narrative for a human anatomy lesson. A Scribner hardcover (Reviews, June 15). (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Dr. Temperance Brennan unaccountably begins making mistakes. Could the Cook County forensic anthropologist really have misidentified a murder as accidental death? An anonymous tipster insists on it to the deceased person's well-connected relative, which sends Tempe up to Quebec where the body was originally found. The death now seems tied to the fates of three other elderly women, all of whom perished violently. Det. Andy Ryan, Tempe's on-again/off-again boyfriend, tries to help, but her new lab tech is surly and uncooperative, and the lab's latest hotshot is quick to point out her failings, which include an overlooked bullet track, phalanges gone missing and no notice of telltale tetracycline staining on the teeth. Eventually, Tempe realizes that her competence isn't slipping; she is being sabotaged. Six cases will come into question, and her lab status will be thoroughly compromised before she almost succumbs to an abduction that leaves her trussed up and helpless in an old military burial ground. Nearly as many plots as there are bones in the body, some to please medical pedants, some to appease ghouls, and some to show off the smart-mouth repartee Tempe (Devil Bones, 2008, etc.) has been indulging in since she got her own TV series on Fox.

Kirkus Reviews

The science is fascinating, and every minute in the morgue with

Tempe is golden.” —The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher