366 pages
English language
Published May 1, 2003 by Pocket Star Books.
It was a summer morning in 1982 when soldiers ravaged the village of Chupan Ya, raping and killing women and children. Twenty-three victims are said to lie in the well where, twenty years later, Dr. Temperance Brennan and a team from the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation now dig. No records were kept. To their families, the dead are "the disappeared."Forensic anthropologist for the medical examiners in North Carolina and Montreal, Tempe is in Guatemala for a month's service to help some families identify and bury their dead. She digs in a cold, damp pit where she finds a hair clip, a fragment of cloth, a tiny sneaker. Her trowel touches something hard: the hip of a child no more than two years old.
It's heartbreaking work. Something savage happened here twenty years ago. The violence continues today. The team is packing up for the day when an urgent satellite call …
It was a summer morning in 1982 when soldiers ravaged the village of Chupan Ya, raping and killing women and children. Twenty-three victims are said to lie in the well where, twenty years later, Dr. Temperance Brennan and a team from the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation now dig. No records were kept. To their families, the dead are "the disappeared."Forensic anthropologist for the medical examiners in North Carolina and Montreal, Tempe is in Guatemala for a month's service to help some families identify and bury their dead. She digs in a cold, damp pit where she finds a hair clip, a fragment of cloth, a tiny sneaker. Her trowel touches something hard: the hip of a child no more than two years old.
It's heartbreaking work. Something savage happened here twenty years ago. The violence continues today. The team is packing up for the day when an urgent satellite call comes in. Two colleagues are under attack. Shots ring out, and Tempe listens in horror to a woman's screams. Then there is silence. Dead silence.
With this new violence, everything changes, both for the team and for Tempe, who's asked by the Guatemalan police for her expertise on another case. Four privileged young women have vanished from Guatemala City in recent months. One is the Canadian ambassador's daughter. Some remains have turned up in a septic tank, and Tempe unfortunately knows septic tanks.
Teaming with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolome Galiano, and with Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, who may have more than just professional reasons to join her on the case, Tempe soon finds herself in a dangerous web that stretches far beyond Guatemala's borders. The stakes are huge. As power, money, greed, and science converge, Tempe must make life-altering choices.
From cutting-edge science in the lab, where Tempe studies fetal bones and cat hair DNA, to a chilling en-counter in a lonely morgue, "Grave Secrets" is powerful, page-turning entertainment from a crime fiction superstar who combines riveting authenticity with witty, elegant prose.
A really great book. Was really involved reading it - horrible things must have happened in Guatemala :(
Otherwise a great book featuring Tempe!
This review applies to the audible version.
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.
This was my first [a:Kathy Reichs|26372|Kathy Reichs|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1201288896p2/26372.jpg]' book after having watched Bones for years. The narration often left me sleepy, but …
This review applies to the audible version.
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.
I enjoyed this book. Reichs is an easy, fast read. I did feel like there were a few soapboxes in this novel. I can tolerate a soapbox, maybe two per novel. Reichs is exceeding that with every novel.
I was unable to solve the mystery this time, which is good. I suspected, but did not know until recently when I disrupted enjoyment for other people, that I have a higher than average solving of twists and turns in stories. That's probably one reason I don't enjoy them that much. I don't like to see the end coming from so far away. Sometimes Reichs gets me and sometimes she doesn't. At least there is mystery in that.
Brennan's attractiveness is climbing, now with 2 stud-muffin detectives courting her. At least there is some realism to the courtships, although I doubt a real detective would be able to fly to South America …
I enjoyed this book. Reichs is an easy, fast read. I did feel like there were a few soapboxes in this novel. I can tolerate a soapbox, maybe two per novel. Reichs is exceeding that with every novel.
I was unable to solve the mystery this time, which is good. I suspected, but did not know until recently when I disrupted enjoyment for other people, that I have a higher than average solving of twists and turns in stories. That's probably one reason I don't enjoy them that much. I don't like to see the end coming from so far away. Sometimes Reichs gets me and sometimes she doesn't. At least there is mystery in that.
Brennan's attractiveness is climbing, now with 2 stud-muffin detectives courting her. At least there is some realism to the courtships, although I doubt a real detective would be able to fly to South America at the drop of a hat. And the smallness of Brennan's world and people in it bugs me a bit.
So, after all this griping about Reichs novel, I finish with: enjoyable read!
Some fairly graphic moments and a different setting from usual
