But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books.

Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Predictably plotted, but written with agreeable plainness-and, except for V.I.'s affair with a suspect (is he just another 'pretty face'?), the sex-role shift is handled with just the right sort of un-cute, matter-of-fact credibility.Īnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Ī week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. exposes a convincing insurance scare, she finds the missing Anita and plays godmother to Peter Thayer's unhappy teenage sister.

Then Peter's father (the real John Thayer) is also murdered, so the insurance/bank/union/mob tangle gets more complicated. then promptly discovers Peter's murdered body, the plot thickens: her client, it seems, was really Anita's father, a shady labor leader and Peter was working for the Ajax Insurance Co.-which may have had illegal connections with the labor leader and with some mobster types (who rough V.I. is hired by banker John Thayer (or so he identifies himself) to locate Anita, the missing girlfriend of his son Peter.

(Victoria) Warshawski of Chicago, first-novelist Paretsky is doing the same thing with an absolutely straight face and the result, if rather flat, is a sturdily readable diversion that's no more implausible than any other hard-boiled fare. 462), David Galloway played the idea of a super-hard-boiled female shamus strictly for laughs-not very successfully.

Whisper of Light by Jennifer DeLucy