`Bones to Ashes’: This Sleuth Has Science at Her Command

“Bones to Ashes” by Kathy Reichs; Scribner ($25.95)

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Everybody loves a good mystery. We like to see Nancy Drew sleuthing, Sherlock Holmes deducing, even Stephanie Plum crazily piecing things together. But simply using the mind to solve the crime? So passe. This is the age of science, featuring high-tech procedures and gadgets, and what better way to deliver justice than with a DNA test in hand? So say shows like “CSI” and “Law & Order,” and so says Kathy Reichs, author of the Temperance Brennan novels that inspired the TV show “Bones.”

With her 10th novel, “Bones to Ashes,” Reichs takes us back into Tempe’s world of horrific crimes, puzzling mysteries, and those oh-so-important scientific solutions. For those unfamiliar with the series, Tempe is the director of forensic anthropology in the province of Quebec, and spends her time working with bones _ primarily human ones _ using them to determine things such as age, identity and cause of death, especially when ordinary police methods won’t work (decomposition can be such a pain).

In this latest novel, she’s confronted with the extremely old skeleton of a teenage girl. As she helps her on-again off-again beau, Detective Andrew Ryan, with a series of cold cases featuring two dead and three missing girls, Tempe begins to fear that the skeleton she’s working on is part of the pattern. Even more troubling, she believes it may be the skeleton of her friend Evangeline, who disappeared when they were both still children.

What follows is her hunt to track down Evangeline, the missing girls, and the killer while dealing with her mixed feelings for Ryan, her concern for her younger sister, Harry (yes, Harry), and her own personal demons (which include alcoholism, divorce, and an extremely intense stubborn streak).

One of the nice things about a 10th novel is that it means the author has had lots of time to practice. Compare this novel with Reichs’ first, and it’s clear exactly how much that practice has achieved. While “Deja Dead” was entertaining, “Bones to Ashes” is far more gripping and fast-paced, the kind of novel you find yourself reading far into the night. Reichs’ characters are appealing, and the mystery is intriguing and disturbingly realistic, right down to the parts that don’t quite get solved at the end. Her writing has also improved over the years, with more structure and fewer of Tempe’s tangential musings to interrupt the narrative.

That said, a few annoying factors still hover like flies around one of Tempe’s corpses. Tempe and Harry, for example, continue to make one stupid, potentially life-threatening decision after another, like charging off unarmed to take down a homicidal maniac. It may be necessary to the plot for them to dive headfirst into dangerous situations, but they move quickly from reckless to ridiculous until the reader wonders why their police buddies haven’t yet slapped them with restraints, or at least monitoring bracelets.

Even more frustrating is Reichs’ tendency to bog down the scientific portions of her story with excess detail. It’s clear that she knows her stuff and wants to share it with the reader, but she comes off sounding like a textbook when all the reader wants to know is, “What happens next?” It’s not fair to say there’s a serial killer on the loose and then spend pages talking about microscopic unicellular plants.

Plants aside, “Bones to Ashes” is worth a read. Even for those uninitiated to Tempe’s world, it will prove an interesting look at the intersection between crime and science, and unlike “CSI,” it has no commercials.

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(c) 2007, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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