During the course of this story, Tempe is residing in Charlotte, North Carolina, dividing her time between teaching at the university and doing forensics for the local authorities. Reichs as usual describes the geography and history of the city, but I could have used a few more sensory details to help ground me in Tempe's reality. Scenes unfolded at a variety of settings, including her lab, her home, a strip mall on the wrong side of town, a Wiccan bonfire, and a riverside body dump site, but all seem oddly remote.
The story brings together what could be a hodgepodge of ripped-from-the-headlines threads in a lesser writer's hands: the discovery of human remains used in some type of ritual, a Bible-thumping politician, gay prostitution, a cop killed in the line of duty, an ongoing tabloid media frenzy, fringe religions such as Wicca and Voodoo, and vigilante justice gone very wrong. Reichs does a good job of weaving all these threads into a solid story with emotional resonance. I did find myself skimming over a lot of the forensic and anthropological explanations -- I usually enjoy them, but they were too detailed even for a geek like me this time. And I was really surprised and a bit disappointed that it took her until chapter 34 to pick up on a key forensic clue that I zeroed in on right away.
Tempe's relationships with everyone from her boss to her daughter to her on-again, off-again boyfriend are the usual minefield, which I find tiresome. In this novel we get a better look at the personal and emotional lives of the two Charlotte detectives she works with closely, which compensates for having to deal with Tempe's personal soap opera.
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