The Devil's Bones

THE DEVIL'S BONES by Jefferson Bass is the third novel in the Dr. Bill Brockton forensics series. Jefferson Bass is the pseudonym of Dr. Bill Bass, a forensics specialist that founded Tennessee's Body Farm, and Jon Jefferson, the journalist who co-wrote Dr. Bass's nonfiction books. I enjoy the CSI world a lot, and I can differentiate between Hollywood DNA results (done while you wait) and real-world DNA results (six months waiting list), but I'm still a sucker for a well-told tale with plenty of hard science behind it. THE DEVIL'S BONES has a lot of both going for it. I enjoyed Dr. Brockton's first-person "aw shucks" kind of down-to-earth storytelling quite a lot. I grew up in small towns where PHDs still wear cowboy books and haven't quite shaken the rural accents. I always looked up to those men and women (yes, there are women there who haven't gotten out of cowboy boots either) because they knew so much but hadn't gotten away from the lives they'd grown up in. To me, his character felt very natural and real. However, I was constantly aware that this was a third novel in a series because I was reminded over and over again that I wasn't privy to the events in the preceding novels. To my way of thinking, there were simply too many ties to the last couple of novels to make this one easily picked up and absorbed by a new reader. I'm going to go back and read the other two books in order, because I was well entertained, but I really regretted not having read them before I read this one. So that's a caveat for new readers that might be interested in this. I think the series is well worth the investment, though. There's also a lot going on in this novel. In the beginning, Dr. Brockton tries to help a colleague out on a murder investigation that includes burning various body parts in an automobile fire at night. Readers are treated to a lot of scientific data right off the bat, but in a way that's immediately absorbable and makes a lot of sense. I particularly enjoyed this case because it ran throughout most of the book. A second investigation leads Dr. Brockton into the grisly discovery that a crematorium isn't doing its job. Instead, the owners have elected to simply toss the bodies into the woods. That storyline was actually taken from recent news. I remember the news articles I read on the real case and was appalled. The authors' descriptions of the horrendous circumstances of what those abandoned bodies were subjected to are graphic. The storyline that I most regretted involved Dr. Brockton's ongoing battle with Garland Hamilton, a medical examiner who has it in for the forensic anthropologist. Over the course of the last two books, Hamilton murdered Dr. Brockton's love interest. Occasionally the writing jarred, however. The writers are given to hyperbole from time to time, such as having Dr. Brockton "bound" into action. I haven't met anyone that's ever claimed to have "bound" into action. There are a few other instance

This is the best Jefferson Bass yet. I'm enjoying this series so much. The quality of the writing is excellent, it's imaginative, and I look forward to the next one.

Jon Jefferson and Dr. Bill Blass have created one great series, where UT's The Body Farm is a major factor of the books. The usual suspects, great characters from previous books, Dr. Bill Brockton, forensic anthropologist and creator of The Body Farm, his grad student/right hand/dear friend, Miranda Lovelady, Art Bohanan, Brockton's best friend, a cop who works undercover catching online predators, Burt DeVriess, nicknamed Grease, a criminal defense attorney who helped Dr. Bill in last outing - and the evil Garland Hamilton, a former ME who was disgraced when Dr. Bill called him on a botched autopsy - Hamilton was in jail and escapes - and is after Dr. Bill! But - Burt DeVriess has a serious query to ask Dr. Bill - his dear aunt was cremated, but they received cremains he doesn't think look right - and asks Bill to look at it - That opens up a horrid can of worms (pardon the expression) - about a crematorium that has not been cremating bodies, but dumping them, and sending pebbles, and other things as the loved one's cremains...May think this situation too much of a stretch, but we in Georgia know it was a frightful reality - there was a crematorium that did just that, and the results were a situation not even Stephen King could think up. Between the investigation of the crematorium, trying to find Hamilton before he tries to kill Dr. Bill, and dealing with his research and feeling for Miranda, Jefferson Bass has written another fantastic book. This is the kind of book Patricia Cornwell used to write - taut, riveting and page turning - Jefferson Bass has taken up that banner and 'he/they' are running with it - Never fails to entertain, educate and scare/thrill. A thriller reader's dream read.

In this third Body Farm novel, Dr. Bill Brockton takes on three bone chilling cases. The first involves establishing whether a woman was burned alive or her remains were incinerated at some later time to falsify the time of death. The second to find out whether the cremains of Dr. Brockton's former defense attorney's deceased Aunt Jean really are hers. The third, to find out if Dr. Brockton's nemesis, the former Knox County, Tennessee Medical Examiner and murderer of Brockton's love interest, really incinerated himself in a cabin fire after he escaped from jail. The plots of all three are interwoven in authentically like real crime happens. Of course, we have some old favorites returning: Art Bohannon, the wise-cracking KPD fingerprint specialist; Miranda Lovelady, the gifted and hardworking grad student; Burt DeVriess, aka "Grease", the slick defense attorney; and Jim Conner, the new Sheriff from Cooke County, Tennessee. Of course, the forensics are topnotch, the tension doesn't let up, and there's just enough good-humored wisecracking to keep reader blood pressure from skyrocketing.