#BookReview :: Fatal Voyage (Temperance Brennan #4) by Kathy Reichs

When a plane crashes high in the mountains of North Carolina, Dr. Temperence Brennan is first on the scene. As a forensic anthropologist for the state, she serves on the disaster response team. The task that cofronts her is a sad and sickening one. 

A chance discovery concerns Tempe: a severed foor, away from the main crash site. A deserted house is buried so deep in the woods that locals know nothing of its existence. And her investigation throws up more questions than answers.

Before she can make any progress Tempe's profesiional standing is threatened. But she fears that, air tragedy aside, another corpse lies in the woods. Pitting herself against a conspiracy of silence, Tempe vows to bring justice for her mystery victim. 




I picked this book up as soon as I finished reading Deadly Decisions (Temperance Brennan #3).

This time Tempe is on the team that arrives first at the site of an airplane crash. The job at hand this time is really difficult. When Tempe finds a piece of evidence that shouldn’t have been at the scene and a small house that the locals were not aware of, she yet again takes it upon herself to solve the case. Only this time things are complicated as her character and ethics are being questioned. Now, she has only Andrew Ryan to depend on as she rushes to not only solve the case but also to clear her name.

I have to admit that the description of the crash site gave me goose bumps. The author has really described the scene with great detail so as to make it easy for us readers to form a mental image. That, together with the author’s note at the end of the book regarding her experience of working at the 9/11 World Trade Centre site of the terrorist attack, made this book a bit too real to me. No matter the rest of the novel, this is something that had me staring at the pages for quite some time. It is easy to read a piece of fiction. But I cannot, even now, even begin to imagine how people manage to actually face such situations.

Rest of the novel is in true Kathy Reichs style – predictable with too many coincidences. I Am finally growing to like Tempe as a book character more than Tempe of ‘Bones’ the TV series. Also, now that I finally know (I think I am the last one to realise this) how much of her personal life experiences Kathy Reichs puts into her books, I think I appreciate her a bit more.

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