Bones to Ashes: Reichs Wastes a Good Plot with Improbable Action

It's amazing, rally, how little most people understand about the odds of the very rare occurring. Amazing, perhaps, though clearly the basic driving force behind all those one-armed bandits, state lotteries, and defense attorneys who cavil at "one in a billion odds" when faced with DNA evidence. Amazing, especially among those whose education has exposed them to the mathematics of probability; people like the fictional forensic anthropologist Temperance "Tempe" Brennan, PhD (yes, the same Dr. Brennan on Fox's "Bones"). In Tempe's case, you'd think the scientific skepticism necessary to her work would be a powerful antidote to statistical blindness. Apparently, however, it's insufficient to the task.

Insufficient because the quintessential scientist Brennan is just obsessed with the infinitesimal possibility that some skeletal remains she "appropriated" from a New Brunswick cop shop belong to... get this... her childhood girlfriend Evangeline from summers in North Carolina, who dropped off her radar more than three decades ago after going home to the Maritimes. Yeah, right - even in Tempe Brennan's geographically deficient world, where there are only two places (Montreal and North Carolina), like that's gonna happen.

It's not as if Brennana doesn't already have other work to do: her erstwhile (or perhaps not) lover, Lt. Ryan - he of the impossibly blue eyes - has a couple of unidentified bodies for her to parse in the lab. Said remains may be tied to a string of as many as half a dozen missing teenaged girls over the past decade, including one who's only been gone a week. To make matters worse, little sister Harry's in town, replete with her Texas drawl, skin-tight jeans, and waist-length blonde hair. What with trying to keep Harry out of trouble, get Ryan into trouble, and k the missing Evangeline's missing family long-distance to the Maritimes, it's a wonder Tempe has time to get any work done at all. Rest assured, however, that Dr. Brennan will keep all those balls (except, naturally, her messy love life) in the air simultaneously - though it'll take some blind luck and maybe a little divine intervention to solve her case... cases, in fact.


Bones to Ashes is the tenth in the Tempe Brennan series, the fictional (mis)adventures of a forensic anthropologist as reported by a woman who holds the job in real life. Though recent installments have found Brennan studying the bones in Central America and Israel, this time out author Kathy Reichs has brought her home. Well, at least to one of her homes, for Brennan (like her creator) splits her time between Montreal and North Carolina. At least in Bones to Ashes, unlike in several earlier Brennan adventures, there isn't a criminal conspiracy with branch offices near both of Tempe's homes; just at the one in Montreal. Well, there seems to be a branch in Acadia, too, where the missing Evangeline lived. At least Brennan's not up against international intrigue this time - just interprovincial, I guess.

Therein lies the biggest shortcoming of what is otherwise a fast-paced and well-planned plot. As Reichs had already proved in earlier Brennan forensic mysteries, she's unable to shake the clutches of the Coincidence Fairy - the mere suggestion that "Hippo's Girl," as the unidentified Acadian skeleton is known, might be the long-missing Evangeline is frankly ludicrous. That's not to mention the connection the investigation discovers between a Montreal photographer and a small-potatoes Acadian crime boss... who just happens to be... well, it boggles the imagination who he just happens to be. Why Reichs, who could have easily presented a forensic thriller sans the obligatory connection to Tempe's North Carolina childhood, chose to muddy her otherwise fresh and eminently readable prose with so patently ridiculous a plot twist is completely beyond my ken. Perhaps I'm no longer willing to suspend my disbelief off the top of the nearest radio antenna... That, and even though I'm no forensic anthropologist, the cause of the "mysterious" lesions on the old skeleton of "Hippo's Girl" was pretty much a no-brainer.


All of which is really too bad... Tempe Brennan's a fun character, one who (unlike heroines like Anna Pigeon and Alex Cooper) has finally learned not to do stupid things like running into battle without backup or confronting armed bad guys with only a lab report for a weapon. She's realistic - recovering alcoholic mother of a twenty-something daughter, owner of cat and part-owner of bird (Montreal) and dog (North Carolina). She's fun; has a fun sister (who needs to learn something about caution), and is a darned good scientist. With each new case Reichs works in juicy scientific tidbits; this time an absorbing primer on forensic linguistics.

One habit of the author that I tend to find bothersome is the use of an ever-shortening sentence fragments to indicate a rising level of suspense.

You know something's about to happen.

It's coming soon.

Like perhaps.

This.

Figure Bones to Ashes as an interesting forensic mystery that's, unfortunately, been marred by the insertion of a string of unnecessary coincidences, coincidences that detract from the core plot instead of enhance it. As Tempe's Montreal co-workers might say, "Tabernac! this could have been better!"