The focus of my blog is to review book series and not individual novels, but writers are going to continue writing novels within a series even after I have done my review, so I plan on reviewing the individual novels as they come into circulation.   Kathy Reichs has just recently added book #17, Bones Never Lie, to the Temperance Brennan series.

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The latest novel from Kathy Reichs, Bones Never Lie, was definitely written with her longtime fans in mind. For those of you that have been religiously following the series you will recognize the villain, Anique Pomerleau, from a previous novel, Monday Mourning. In Monday Mourning, Pomerleau was the “bad gal”, who got away and Reichs is finally getting around to dealing with this little loose end in the latest addition to the series. Even though Reichs tries to give enough background on the events that took place in Monday Mourning, it doesn’t replace the fact that this book should have been read before reading Bones Never Lie, and for those who are introducing themselves to Kathy Reichs for the first time you may be disappointed in this latest edition mainly because it may be difficult to relate to the characters and the circumstances that have lead up to the events that happen in Bones Never Lie.

One of my major complaints of the series has been the on again and off again romantic relationship that Temp Brennan has with Detective Andrew Ryan. In the previous novel, Bones of the Lost, Ryan makes a brief appearance only to convey the news that his daughter, Lily, has died from a heroin overdose and that he must “get away” to deal with his grief. I felt that was just a nasty teaser, to let the fans know that Ryan is around but only to disappear into some dark abyss. Well I guess that Reichs is finally starting to listen to her fans and even though it has taken seventeen novels to “get it” that the fans either want to know if Ryan is going to be a part of Brennan’s life or if he is out of it. In Bones Never Lie, Brennan needs to track down Ryan, who turns up in Costa Rica, to bring him back to reality and assist in a cold murder case that involves Pomerleau, a case that they worked on together. Ryan is pretty cranky through most of the novel and you get the feeling that Reichs is going to disappoint us one more time but then at the end of the novel she leaves us with a cliffhanger that maybe, just maybe, we got an answer on the Brennan-Ryan relationship, but of course, we will have to tune in to book eighteen of the series to find out.

As for the science, we don’t get to see much in the way of skeletal gross anatomy that Reichs’ novels are famously known for but there is a bit of a lesson on the physiological effects of carbon monoxide on the body as well as a lesson on the preservation effects of maple syrup which is fun for us geeky folks but might be a drag for those non-scientists out there.

Overall, this is a fun novel for the Kathy Reichs’ fan but might be an OK novel for those who haven’t kept up with the series. I would recommend reading Monday Mourning before reading Bones Never Lie if you haven’t already.

To learn more about the series check out Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan Series.