Watching Bones

Recently, Mark Ulyseas in Bali got the opportunity to interview Kathy Reichs, the author of the Temperance Brennan series that sparked the Fox show Bones. This woman must be brilliant. (Did you know that she’s one of only 50 orensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology? Now that’s a field of work that is understaffed!) I couldn’t imagine how neat it would be to hang out with her for a little while to learn from her, although I must admit that it sounds like her work is a little depressing. In the interview, she talks about working on exhuming a mass grave. She remembers that while working there, “this mother came up to me and held my hand. Her children and grandchildren were in the mass graves. It was moving.”

She also talked about how a lot of her books are based on things that she has seen and dealt with in real life. Her latest book, Bones to Ashes is one such story. Reichs explained that “the plot is based on a true story of a child’s skeleton found on the border of Brunswick and Quebec. I worked on that case. However, the parents or family members were never located. It still remains a mystery.”

Kathy has a new book due out August 26th, 2008 called Devil Bones which will incorporate Voodoo, Black Magic and Witchcraft into the storyline. Sounds like another winner! (But considering that all of her books have found themselves on the New York Bestsellers list, that should come as no surprise…)

Kathy Reichs is out promoting her 10th book, Bones to Ashes. In an online interview with Campbell Live, she talks about what her life as the real “Temperance Brennan” is like. (Check out the video interview for yourself - it’s worth watching.)

Reichs is one of only 55 forensic anthropologists in North America. She deals mostly with looking at bones to determine the answers of the questions who is it and what was the cause of death. She occasionally works on what happened to the body after death, for example in the case of dismemberment. In her work, she can provide a biological profile of the victim – age, sex, height, race, medical history, and lifestyle habits (such as repetitive patterns).

Her real life cases inspire her novels, which in turn inspire the TV show Bones. Although Reichs admits laughingly that her real life lab is a little more “low tech” than the show. Obviously there is no ‘Angelator’ for her to use, and her storage of bones is more of a cardboard box sort instead of the classy display case on Bones.

She says she has to remain detached and not become emotionally involved in the cases she works on. Something that isn’t always easy as she can sometimes find herself wondering about the victims. Reichs says that one big myth of most TV crime shows is that every case is eventually solved. In truth, there are many that remain unsolved.

When asked about our culture’s fascination with murder mysteries and crime dramas, she says “murder is the ultimate wrong you can do” and that she believes that reading (or watching) a murder mystery gives people a voyeuristic look into the world of a murder case.

Check out the new book by Kathy Reichs, creator of Bones, and the real-life version of Temperance Brennan. And don’t miss out on the chance to enter to win your very own copy! Read on for an excert from her latest, Bones to Ashes:

Babies die. People vanish. People die. Babies vanish.

I was hammered early by those truths. Sure, I had a kid’s understanding that mortal life ends. At school, the nuns talked of heaven, purgatory, limbo, and hell. I knew my elders would “pass.” That’s how my family skirted the subject. People passed. Went to be with God. Rested in peace. So I accepted, in some ill-formed way, that earthly life was temporary. Nevertheless, the deaths of my father and baby brother slammed me hard.

And Évangéline Landry’s disappearance simply had no explanation.

But I jump ahead.

It happened like this.

As a little girl, I lived on Chicago’s South Side, in the less fashionable outer spiral of a neighborhood called Beverly. Developed as a country retreat for the city’s elite following the Great Fire of 1871, the hood featured wide lawns and large elms, and Irish Catholic clans whose family trees had more branches than the elms. A bit down-at-the-heels then, Beverly would later be gentrified by boomers seeking greenery within proximity of the Loop.

A farmhouse by birth, our home predated all its neighbors. Green-shuttered white frame, it had a wraparound porch, an old pump in back, and a garage that once housed horses and cows.

My memories of that time and place are happy. In cold weather, neighborhood kids skated on a rink created with garden hoses on an empty lot. Daddy would steady me on my double blades, clean slush from my snowsuit when I took a header. In summer, we played kick ball, tag, or Red Rover in the street. My sister, Harry, and I trapped fireflies in jars with hole-punched lids.

During the endless Midwestern winters, countless Brennan aunts and uncles gathered for cards in our eclectically shabby parlor. The routine never varied. After supper, Mama would take small tables from the hall closet, dust the tops, and unfold the legs. Harry would drape the white linen cloths, and I would center the decks, napkins, and peanut bowls.

With the arrival of spring, card tables were abandoned for front porch rockers, and conversation replaced canasta and bridge. I didn’t understand much of it. Warren Commission. Gulf of Tonkin. Khrushchev. Kosygin. I didn’t care. The banding together of those bearing my own double helices assured me of well-being, like the rattle of coins in the Beverly Hillbillies bank on my bedroom dresser. The world was predictable, peopled with relatives, teachers, kids like me from households similar to mine. Life was St. Margaret’s school, Brownie Scouts, Mass on Sunday, day camp in summer.

Then Kevin died, and my six-year-old universe fragmented into shards of doubt and uncertainty. In my sense of world order, death took the old, great-aunts with gnarled blue veins and translucent skin. Not baby boys with fat red cheeks.

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