It was a summer morning in 1982 when soldiers ravaged the village of Chupan Ya, raping and killing women and children. Twenty-three victims are said to lie in the well where, twenty years later, Dr. Temperance Brennan and a team from the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation now dig. No records were kept. To their families, the dead are "the disappeared."Forensic anthropologist for the medical examiners in North Carolina and Montreal, Tempe is in Guatemala for a month's service to help some families identify and bury their dead. She digs in a cold, damp pit where she finds a hair clip, a fragment of cloth, a tiny sneaker. Her trowel touches something hard: the hip of a child no more than two years old.
It's heartbreaking work. Something savage happened here twenty years ago. The violence continues today. The team is packing up for the day when an urgent satellite call …
It was a summer morning in 1982 when soldiers ravaged the village of Chupan Ya, raping and killing women and children. Twenty-three victims are said to lie in the well where, twenty years later, Dr. Temperance Brennan and a team from the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation now dig. No records were kept. To their families, the dead are "the disappeared."Forensic anthropologist for the medical examiners in North Carolina and Montreal, Tempe is in Guatemala for a month's service to help some families identify and bury their dead. She digs in a cold, damp pit where she finds a hair clip, a fragment of cloth, a tiny sneaker. Her trowel touches something hard: the hip of a child no more than two years old.
It's heartbreaking work. Something savage happened here twenty years ago. The violence continues today. The team is packing up for the day when an urgent satellite call comes in. Two colleagues are under attack. Shots ring out, and Tempe listens in horror to a woman's screams. Then there is silence. Dead silence.
With this new violence, everything changes, both for the team and for Tempe, who's asked by the Guatemalan police for her expertise on another case. Four privileged young women have vanished from Guatemala City in recent months. One is the Canadian ambassador's daughter. Some remains have turned up in a septic tank, and Tempe unfortunately knows septic tanks.
Teaming with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolome Galiano, and with Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, who may have more than just professional reasons to join her on the case, Tempe soon finds herself in a dangerous web that stretches far beyond Guatemala's borders. The stakes are huge. As power, money, greed, and science converge, Tempe must make life-altering choices.
From cutting-edge science in the lab, where Tempe studies fetal bones and cat hair DNA, to a chilling en-counter in a lonely morgue, "Grave Secrets" is powerful, page-turning entertainment from a crime fiction superstar who combines riveting authenticity with witty, elegant prose.
If I could give this 3.5 stars, I would. This is my first Tempe Brennan (forensic anthropologist) book (though not the first in the series). I liked several of the characters, and there were enough interconnecting stories to keep things mysterious/interesting. I've picked up a couple more Reichs/Brennan books recently, previously loved. I'm looking forward to reading them after a suitable break.
A harrowing excavation unearths a chilling tragedy never laid to rest.
They are “the disappeared,” twenty-three massacre victims buried in a well in the Guatemalan village of Chupan Ya two decades ago. Leading a team of experts on a meticulous, heartbreaking dig, Tempe Brennan pieces together the violence of the past. But a fresh wave of terror begins when the horrific sounds of a fatal attack on two colleagues come in on a blood-chilling satellite call. Teaming up with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolomé Galiano and Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe quickly becomes enmeshed in the cases of four privileged young women who have vanished from Guatemala City — and finds herself caught in deadly territory where power, money, greed, and science converge.
This was my first [a:Kathy Reichs|26372|Kathy Reichs|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1201288896p2/26372.jpg]' book after having watched Bones for years. The narration often left me sleepy, but …
This review applies to the audible version.
A harrowing excavation unearths a chilling tragedy never laid to rest.
They are “the disappeared,” twenty-three massacre victims buried in a well in the Guatemalan village of Chupan Ya two decades ago. Leading a team of experts on a meticulous, heartbreaking dig, Tempe Brennan pieces together the violence of the past. But a fresh wave of terror begins when the horrific sounds of a fatal attack on two colleagues come in on a blood-chilling satellite call. Teaming up with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolomé Galiano and Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe quickly becomes enmeshed in the cases of four privileged young women who have vanished from Guatemala City — and finds herself caught in deadly territory where power, money, greed, and science converge.
This was my first [a:Kathy Reichs|26372|Kathy Reichs|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1201288896p2/26372.jpg]' book after having watched Bones for years. The narration often left me sleepy, but I was interested in the stories of the girls and how they all tied together. I would recommend the print version over the audible version in this case.
I am now reading her books from the beginning (mostly for the Andrew Ryan back story) and getting a feel for how Reichs' writing may have improved over the years. I started into the series knowing that the Temperance Brennan in these books is supposed to be an older and wiser version than our beloved Tempe in Bones, so I have no gripe about the character discrepancies there. The Tempe in the books is much more human and emotional, less logical and reserved.
In [b:Grave Secrets|281350|Grave Secrets (Temperance Brennan, #5)|Kathy Reichs|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173388001s/281350.jpg|2747794] we travel from Guatemala to Canada and back. We learn a bit about Ryan's college days, a possible new love interest for Tempe, political intrigue (ok, not so much, but politicians are trying to cover up a myriad of sins). And Tempe is almost murdered at least twice. I don't know if this is normal for the series or not, but I do enjoy a heroine who gets herself into that much trouble.
I may have to re-read the book in print, but overall I enjoyed it.
