Let bones speak

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Let Bones Speak ( Deadly Décisions in English ) is the third detective novel by the US author Kathy Reichs from 2000 with the forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Tempe" Brennan as the main character. Tempe works in Montreal, Canada and Charlotte, North Carolina as an advisor to the local police force. In Let Bones Speak, Tempe investigates several murders related to a gang war between rival biker gangs in Montreal. Tempe pays particular attention to a surprise find on the railing of a motorcycle gang, the bones of a teenager with an unusual implant in the skull. The investigation takes Tempe to her home in North Carolina, where some gang members have pasts. While Tempe helps with the investigation, her nephew Kit, a motorcycle fan and visiting Tempe, gets himself into the firing line of the argument. The novel culminates in an argument between motorcycle gangs at a member's funeral, in which Tempe and Kit are also injured. Eventually, however, the suspects for some murders are arrested and the teenager's body is identified.

The main character of the novels is also the template for the main character of the television series Bones - The Bone Hunter .

content

The novel begins in Montreal , Canada, where clashes between rival motorcycle gangs, the Heathens and the Vipers, escalate. The forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Tempe" Brennan is supposed to help identify two completely torn corpses after a bomb attack on the Vipers' clubhouse. The assassins, Ronald and Donald Vaillancourt, identical twins, were killed in the attack themselves because they were caught by a Vipers member and were bombed. The police are also working on a shootout on two members of the Vipers, Spider Marcotte and his girlfriend, in which a nine-year-old girl, Emily Anne, also dies innocently. When a Vipers member unpacks details of the gang war against mitigation, excavations begin near the Vipers' clubhouse: Another surprise awaits Tempe there. She finds the skull and thighbones of a young girl on the premises next to two already skeletonized corpses. A striking feature of the skull is an implant that is typically used for hydrocephalus . Tempe's research reveals that the young girl is Savannah Osprey, a teenager from Shalotte, North Carolina , and that some of her bones have already been found in North Carolina at Myrtle Beach.

While Tempe is working on her cases, she also has some private worries: She receives a visit from her nephew Kit. Through a dinner at a friend's house in Tempes, Kit contacts a journalist, Lyle Crease, through whom Kit contacts the biker scene. Tempe is deeply concerned about these contacts, especially as her police colleagues point out that Kit can be seen in a surveillance photo of an illegal motorcycle gang. Tempe is also concerned about Detective Lieutenant Andrew Ryan, a colleague and friend, who is suddenly suspended from duty and accused of trafficking in stolen goods and drugs. When Tempe has a dangerous argument with a motorcycle gang while searching for the runaway kit, she meets Ryan, who helps her out of the situation and gives her a sign. This leads them to the conclusion that Ryan is investigating undercover for the police around the motorcycle gangs.

Further murders of gang members suggest that the clashes are escalating further: The police found 'Cherokee' Desjardins, small dealers and a former member of the Predators, a motorcycle club close to the Hells Angels , shot dead in his apartment. A member of Heathen's, George Dorsey, is murdered in prison after hinting to Tempe that he has information about Savannah Osprey's death.

Tempe finally achieved the breakthrough when she examined a photo leaked to her in the laboratory by temporary worker Jocelyn: In the photo, she found Savanna Osprey, Cherokee Desjardins and Lyle Crease on Myrtle Beach in the 1980s. Tempe's suspicion grows that Cherokee Desjardins and Lyle Crease could be responsible for Savannah's death. It is also confirmed that Crease was part of the illegal motorcycle scene in the 1980s. Jocelyn, who is part of the biker scene, finally tells her what she knows: George Dorsey killed Spider Marcotte as revenge for the death of the Vaillancourt brothers. Dorsey himself was killed in prison so that he would not unpack more names of suspects. Lyle Crease is, according to Jocelyn, the murderer of Cherokee Desjardins, because he wanted to take the photo from Cherokee, on which he and Cherokee can be seen together with Savannah, which makes him a suspect in the murder case. Before Jocelyn Tempe can tell more, Jocelyn is shot.

Because the biker scene also knows about the suspicion against Crease, they want to use George Dorsey's funeral to take revenge on Lyle Crease. Crease actually appears at the funeral and uses Kit as a shield against the riflemen, a division of the Hells Angels who had traveled to the area. Kit, Tempe and Crease are shot, but the police manage to arrest some of the suspects after the shooting. As it turns out, Cherokee Desjardins and Lyle Crease are actually the killers of Savannah Osprey. They were aspirants for the Hells Angels in North Carolina in the 1980s. There they picked up on a trip to Myrtle Beach and finally strangled and buried them at a party that got out of control. Years later they dug up some of the skull and some bones to decorate the Vipers' clubhouse in Montreal. Because the police suspected the bones, they removed them after a few years and buried them on the premises. Crease cannot be blamed for the murder of Desjardins, he only knocked Desjardins down and ransacked his apartment in search of the photo. The actual murderer of Desjardins, it turns out, was Jocelyn, who shot him to get a bigger supply of drugs for her consumption. To divert suspicion from herself, she spread the information that the killer was Crease.

shape

The knowledgeable descriptions of the work of a forensic anthropologist are characteristic of the novels by Reichs. Here, Reichs can incorporate their own professional experience. As with all of her books, Reichs integrates his own experiences into the events in this work. In an interview, she reported that she once “sorted lumps of meat” after two motorcyclists accidentally blew themselves up with a bomb. In this novel, the author also describes in detail the procedure for a blood trail analysis.

Position in literary history

Deadly Décisions is the third in a series of detective novels by Kathy Reichs about forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan. Together with Patricia Cornwell , Kathy Reichs has helped the forensic detective novel become very popular since the 1990s.

reception

Publishers Weekly praises Deadly Décisions for its scientific accuracy and authenticity, which makes Reichs superior to its rival in the forensic crime novel genre, Patricia Cornwell, because Reichs can report from his own professional experience. However, Publishers Weekly criticizes the too obviously constructed plot. The subplot about Brennan's colleague and friend, Andrew Ryan, who went undercover, is also rather disturbing. Kim Bunce writes in a review of the audio book in The Observer that Reichs succeeds in packing the gruesome subject well into a plot that is suitable for an audio book. The good dialogues and the speaker of the audio book, Katherine Borowitz, are also praised. Dianne Day commends Reichs for her good character drawing of Tempe Brennan and the accurate description of the forensic details on bookreporter.com . However, Day finds the elaboration of the plot too clumsy and unbalanced: The reader is confronted with a lot of information about the FBI, Hydrocephalus or Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs without this being sufficiently emphasized with the plot. The plot of the novel is also driven by too many coincidences, such as: B. Finding the bones of Savannah Osprey in Montreal and North Carolina. Overall, the novel lacks a coherent plot.

Kathy Reichs' forensic crime novels 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.

literature

Text output

  • Kathy Reichs: Deadly Décisions . Scribner, New York 2000, ISBN 0684859718 . (English first edition)
  • Kathy Reichs: Let bones speak . Translated from English by Klaus Berr. Blessing, Munich 2001, ISBN 389667157X . (Hardcover)
  • Kathy Reichs: Let bones speak . Translated from English by Klaus Berr. Blanvalet, Munich 2002, ISBN 3442355907 . (Paperback)

Secondary literature

Web links

Official website of Kathy Reichs , last accessed August 14, 2019.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Fiction Book Review: Deadly Decisions by Kathy Reichs . ( publishersweekly.com [accessed August 25, 2019]).
  2. ↑ Kathy Reichs: Deadly Décisions . Arrow Books, London 2000, ISBN 9780099307105 , pp. 204-217.
  3. ^ 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 , p. 135.
  4. ↑ Kim Bunce: Observer review: Audio - Deadly Decisions by Kathy Reichs . In: The Observer , August 6, 2000, ISSN 0029-7712 ( theguardian.com [accessed August 25, 2019]).
  5. ↑ Dianne Day: Review: Deadly Decisions . ( bookreporter.com [accessed August 25, 2019]).
  6. ^ Official website of Kathy Reichs , last accessed on August 14, 2019.