Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass

First Line: I picked up the hunting knife with my left hand and tested its heft, then shifted it to my right hand to compare.
 
Renowned anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton has spent his career surrounded by death at the Body Farm, a patch of ground in Tennessee dedicated to the science of death, where human remains lie exposed to be studied for their secrets.When he's called upon to help with a case in a remote mountain community, he finds the mummified corpse of a young woman in a cave. Dead for thirty years, the body has been bizarrely preserved and transformed by the environment's unique chemistry. But when Brockton's investigation begins uncovering long-buried secrets and opening old wounds, he learns how far some people will go to protect their secrets.

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Carved in Bone is a book that's been sitting on my To-Be-Read shelves for years, and now was the time that I was in the mood to read it. It is a tale well told, with an interesting main character and lots of information to share. 

Jefferson Bass does an excellent job in placing readers in the hills and hollows of eastern Tennessee, where people's memories are long and their willingness to forget and forgive microscopically short. The scenes in the cave are particularly well done, and they had me looking for a way out the entire time Brockton was down there. I also liked how Bass could go into forensic detail without graphic and gory detail. 

If you like the subject of forensics, and let's face it, that's probably the main reason why readers would pick up a Body Farm mystery-- there's much to be learned here. I think the nugget of information that impressed me the most was about children's fingerprints. (Before puberty, a child's fingerprints are water-based and evaporate, which is one reason why finding missing children can be so difficult.)

There's a lot of good to be found in this first Body Farm mystery. The mystery was first-rate, and I thought the setting was excellent, but, ultimately, Dr. Bill Brockton did not "grab me" enough to make me want to continue reading the series. Your mileage may certainly vary.

Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass
ISBN: 9780060759827
Harper © 2006
Mass Market Paperback, 352 pages
 
Thriller, #1 Body Farm mystery
Rating: B
Source: Paperback Swap

10 comments:

  1. The information about children's fingerprints was new to me. There maybe a lot of information like that in this story. Thanks for the review.

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  2. It does sound like there's a lot to learn about and like here, Cathy. IF I'm being honest, I have to be in the mood for a forensics novel; the gritty details can get to me if I'm not. But that said, this sounds like an interesting mystery, and I think the Body Farm is a fascinating institution with a lot going on there. Glad you found a lot to like here.

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    1. One of the things I liked about this book was that the forensic detail wasn't gritty.

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  3. I read a couple of these, and like you, I found some fascinating information, but ultimately they didn't really work for me.

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    1. At least I now know that I'm not alone! ;-)

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  4. Dr. Bill Bass was the founder of the real Body Farm, and I liked the nonfiction book he wrote with journalist Jon Jefferson better than the series that they created when the publisher suggested it. Though I did appreciate the forensic details, as you mentioned, as well as the fact that they created a fairly normal, decent human being as the protagonist - that was a nice change from the haunted, tortured type.

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    1. Yes, I do get tired of tortured protagonists.

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  5. I’ve liked both this series and his nonfiction titles. My daughter started studying Forensic Science at university this year, and fortuitously the only Body Farm in the country is nearby her campus. She’s really looking forward to going as part of her studies.

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