Spider Bones

June 21, 2010
A perplexing death in Quebec occupies Dr. Temperance Brennan in Reichs's fine 13th novel featuring the forensic anthropologist (after 206 Bones). The fingerprints of a man who died during autoerotic asphyxiation indicate that the deceased is John Charles Lowery of North Carolina, but Lowery supposedly died in Vietnam in 1968. Unsurprisingly, Lowery's father is reluctant to allow Brennan to reopen old family wounds, but she's determined to find out who's buried in Lowery's grave if Lowery died in Quebec. Brennan heads to Hawaii to seek the help of an old friend at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), whose mission is to find the remains of American war dead and bring them home. But instead of clarifying matters, Brennan's investigation only raises more questions, including parallel inquiries into a series of shark attacks and escalating island gang violence. Reichs, who once again uses her own scientific knowledge to enhance a complex plot and continually developing characters, delivers a whopper of a final twist.