Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Since making her literary debut in 1997’s Déjà Dead, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan has investigated dark, unsettling, and frequently bizarre crimes. Even though the books stick to a formula, Reichs always works in enough variation to keep the stories fresh. Her new entry to the series is no exception. Here, an unusual tattoo on a lightning-strike victim leads Brennan to a mystery involving a series of disappearances of young male travelers to Turks and Caicos. Over a period of years, their bodies have turned up in unusual places, but there’s little else to connect the victims. Then Brennan swoops in and discovers a boat full of corpses. While the plot is suitably attention-grabbing, it’s Brennan’s character that keeps us glued to the page. In a genre full of strong female protagonists, she’s a standout: a brilliant scientist who knows she can be abrasive, demanding, and condescending, but who really isn’t all that interested in changing. She is who she is, and we love her for it.