Through the marrow and bone

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Through Mark and Bones ( Fatal Voyage ) is the fourth crime novel by the American author Kathy Reichs . The focus is on the forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Tempe" Brennan, who, after a plane crash in North Carolina, is only part of a team that is supposed to recover and identify the bodies. After Tempe finds a human foot near the crash site and wants to examine it more closely because it does not match the rest of the recovered corpses, she is suddenly suspended and faced with absurd accusations that she behaved unprofessionally at the crash site and thus endangered the investigation. In order to clear her name, she continues to investigate on her own. Her investigation leads her to a hidden hut near the crash site, where it turns out a secret society has been celebrating cannibalistic rituals for years . Together with the responsible sheriff of the region, Lucy Crowe, and her Canadian colleague Lieutenant-Detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe succeeds in identifying the members of the secret society and identifying the bodies buried in the hut.

The novel is the fourth novel in the crime series about the forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan, whose character also inspired the television series Bones . The investigation into the plane crash in the novel received an unexpected topicality due to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the USA.

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The focus of the novel is the forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Tempe" Brennan , who works alternately in Charlotte , North Carolina and Montreal , Canada . In this novel, Tempe is first part of a team tasked with identifying victims of a plane crash in Swain County , North Carolina , a wildlife sanctuary. While searching for the body parts of the victims, Tempe comes across a pack of coyotes fighting over something of interest to them - a human foot. Due to the far-reaching state of decomposition, this cannot come from one of the aircraft passengers, and the values ​​of the foot do not match the information given about the 88 passengers on the aircraft. Tempe searches the area around the site and comes across a seemingly abandoned, locked hut. Before she can find out more about the foot and the cabin, however, she is suddenly withdrawn from the investigation into the plane crash by Lieutenant Governor Parker Davenport, the North Carolina State Attorney General, on the grounds that she was unjustifiably at the crash site and with evidence was handled unprofessionally. This is also passed on to their employers and the press.

In order to clear her name, Tempe then begins on her own with investigations in and around Swain County to find out more about the origin of the foot and about the abandoned hut. She is assisted by Lucy Crowe, Swain County's Sheriff, and Andrew Ryan, her colleague in the Montreal Police Department. Ryan is also in Swain County after the plane crash killed his longtime police partner, whose job it was to find a convict and key witness. In connection with the crash, a check is also carried out to determine whether the crash was intended to get the witness out of the way or whether it could possibly be a terrorist attack.

Research by Tempe, Lucy Crowe and Andrew Ryan shows that the cabin belongs to a company called H&F, to which Tempe can at least assign some names. When she inquired about the hut and about this company, Tempe came across rather unwilling interlocutors among the population. Together with Lucy Crowe, she investigates the area around the hut, where Tempes dog finds a place where the body was probably buried, to which the foot belongs. Nevertheless, they do not make any progress with the foot and the hut itself, because no judge issues an investigation decision for the hut. This only changes when Lucy Crowe and Tempe and some of her people take a closer look at the hut on the grounds that there may have been survivors of the plane crash hiding there. In the basement of the hut you will find two corpses in varying degrees of decomposition as well as wall paintings and lettering, which it turns out to be mostly related to cannibalism in art and history. A more detailed examination of the hut is now possible with a court order, and one finds a large number of corpses buried, apparently from different years. According to Tempes' analysis, traces on the corpses indicate cannibalism.

Tempe achieved another breakthrough when the widow of a member of the H&F Society, who initially did not want to help her with H&F and the hut, sent her the diary of her deceased husband. Based on the diary and other information leaked to Tempe, the image of a secret society that initially founded itself for hunting and partying and saw itself as an elitist club is condensing. When a guest of the society was killed, one of the former chairmen of the society initiated a cannibalistic ritual that obliged everyone to maintain secrecy. The killing of an old person and the ensuing cannibalism became the rite of initiation for all new members of the H&F or Hell Fire Club. The bodies in the basement of the hut are elderly Swain County people who were killed by members for the cannibalistic ritual and then buried.

With her investigation, Tempe succeeds in clearing up the riddle about the foot and thus also proving her thesis that the foot did not come from the plane crash. It also turns out that Parker Davenport, who was responsible for Tempes' suspension, is a member of the H&F and the intention of the suspension was to keep Tempe from examining the foot and the hut. Davenport is found after shooting himself. The cause of the plane crash is also clarified: It was not a terrorist attack, but rather a chain of unfortunate circumstances and technical problems that led to a fire in the luggage compartment and the failure of the electrical system.

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The novel is portrayed from the first person's perspective of the main character Temperance Brennan. Since the author Kathy Reichs is herself a forensic anthropologist, she can weave her own professional knowledge into the novel. Like her character Temperance Brennan, Reichs is responsible for forensic investigations in North Carolina and Montreal, Canada. Like Tempe Brennan, Reichs is also a member of DMORT, a government Disaster Mortuary Operational Team . This mixture of personal narration from the first person perspective and realistic narration from the work of forensic anthropology is what distinguishes the novels of Kathy Reichs and what is praised by literary criticism.

Position in literary history

Kathy Reichs' novels are published together with those of z. B. Patricia Cornwell mentioned as examples of the forensic crime novel in which the main character solves criminal cases with the scientific means of forensics .

reception

Sale, translation, adaptation as audio book and on television

Among other things, the book was on the New York Times bestseller lists right after it was published. The novel has been translated into several languages, including German, French, Italian, Chinese, and Hebrew. The novel was also the template for several audio book editions, including in English with Katherine Horowitz as speaker and in the German translation with Katharina Spierling as speaker.

The forensic crime novels by Kathy Reichs around the character Temperance Brennan also served as inspiration for the television series Bones . Although the main character in Bones is also called Temperance Brennan, aspects from Kathy Reich's own life were used as models for the television series, not so much the characters and the storylines of the novels.

Timeliness for publication

The book details the activities involved in recovering and identifying victims after a plane crash, including working to determine the cause of the crash, such as a terrorist attack. The novel was published in July 2001 and had a topicality unexpected by the author with the terrorist attacks on September 11th in the USA. Reichs himself was involved in the rescue and identification of the victims in New York as a member of the state disaster task force DMORT ( Disaster Mortuary Operational Team ). In an interview, Reichs said that, despite her many years of professional experience, the rescue work had shaken her very much. In the epilogue to her novel, she writes: "The reality of that day exceeded anything I could have imagined as a novelist."

Reviews

Publishers Weekly praises the exciting plot, especially in the last quarter of the book, and points out that it is the character development of Temperance Brennan in what is now the fourth novel in the crime series that lifts the book above the competition.

Kim Bunce in the Guardian highlights the opening scene of the novel, which describes the work after the plane crash. Here, as with her other novels, Reich manages to captivate the reader. Bunce also refers to the complexly woven plot by Reichs and praises the good reading of the audio book by Katherine Borowitz.

Ann Bruns from Bookreporter.com also praised the successful character drawing of Temperance Brennan and how Reichs managed to link a personal story with the criminal case. The fact that Reichs is herself a forensic anthropologist and can therefore give the story a realistic background is also positively noted.

literature

Text output

  • Kathy Reichs: Fatal Voyage . Scribner, New York 2001, ISBN 0-684-85972-6 .
  • Kathy Reichs: Through marrow and bone . Translated from English by Klaus Berr. Blessing, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-89667-197-9 . (Hardcover)
  • Kathy Reichs: Through marrow and bone . Translated from English by Klaus Berr. Blanvalet, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-442-35915-5 . (Paperback)
  • Kathy Reichs: Through marrow and bone . Translated from English by Klaus Berr. Blessing, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-89667-309-2 . (one-time special edition "10 years of Karl Blessing Verlag", paperback)

Audio book

  • Kathy Reichs: Fatal Voyage . Audio book read by Katherine Borowitz. Random Audio, New York 2001, ISBN 978-0-684-85972-9 . (Audio book in English original language)
  • Kathy Reichs: Fatal Voyage . Audiobook read by Kate Harper. BBC Audiobooks America, Hampton, NH, 2002, ISBN 9780792727477 . (Audio book in English original language)
  • Kathy Reichs: A Fatal Audio Collection . Audiobooks read by Michele Pawk and Katherine Borowitz. Simon & Schuster Audio, New York 2004, ISBN 9780743554695 . (English audio book, collective edition with Fatal Voyage , Grave Secrets and Bare Bones in one issue)
  • Kathy Reichs: Through marrow and bone . Translated from English by Klaus Berr. Abridged audio version, read by Hansi Jochmann . Random House Audio, Cologne 2006, ISBN 9783866042155 . (German audio book, abridged version)
  • Kathy Reichs: Through marrow and bone . Translated from English by Klaus Berr. Digital audio book, read by Katharina Spiering. Random House Audio, New York 2012, ISBN 9783837111644 . (German audio book)

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ann Bruns: Fatal Voyage (book review). In: Bookreporter.com January 21, 2011, accessed May 30, 2020.
  2. ^ Dorothee Birke, Stella Butter, Marion Gymnich: Speaking body: Kathy Reichs . In: Vera Nünning (ed.): The American and British crime novel. Genres - developments - model interpretations . Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 2008, ISBN 978-3-86821-071-2 , pp. 136-137.
  3. ↑ Compare-Bestseller Lists: Hardcover Fiction . In: The New York Times , August 26, 2001, accessed May 30, 2020.
  4. ↑ Kathy Reichs ' official website , accessed May 30, 2020.
  5. ↑ Georgina Prodhan: Kathy Reichs, Dead-On Writer . In: Washington Post , September 10, 2002, accessed May 30, 2020.
  6. ^ Fatal Voyage (book review). In: Publishers Weekly , May 21, 2001, accessed May 30, 2020.
  7. ↑ Kim Bunce: Fatal Voyage by Kathy Reichs read by Katherine Borowitz (audio book review). In: The Guardian , July 29, 2001, accessed May 30, 2020.
  8. ^ Ann Bruns: Fatal Voyage (book review). In: Bookreporter.com January 21, 2011, accessed May 30, 2020.