
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 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."
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, Tempe is 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. Unfortunately, Tempe knows septic tanks.
Teaming with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolomé Galiano, and with Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe soon finds herself in a dangerous web that stretches far beyond Guatemala's borders. 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 encounter in a lonely morgue, Grave Secrets is powerful entertainment from a crime fiction superstar who combines riveting authenticity with witty, elegant prose.
Don't miss any of Tempe Brennan's investigations.
©2002 Temperance Brennan, L.P., All Rights Reserved; (P)2002 Simon & Schuster Inc., All Rights Reserved, AUDIOWORKS Is an Imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster Inc.
"The author keeps the twists coming, and by the novel's climax, she has skillfully interwoven her many subplots and red herrings into a satisfying puddle of sex, sleaze, greed and gore." (Publishers Weekly)
"One of [crime fiction's] more complex and interesting protagonists." (Amazon.com)
The secrets uncovered by anthropologist Tempe Brennan have the chilling reality of true crime, and Reichs's ability to set scenes with careful detail makes this medical thriller particularly unsettling. The unlikely locales of Guatemala and Montreal provide interesting contrast. Narrator Katherine Borowitz's facility with the various accents places each of the characters as she moves the story through its intriguing twists of human rights issues, forensic science and government corruption. Borowitz is masterful with the banter between the detectives, Canadian and Guatemalan, and Brennan. She switches easily between the accents without a miss. Listeners will have a hard time turning this off before the final clues are revealed. (c) AudioFile 2002
About AudioFile