Flesh and Bone

The body farm is easy to imagine because I watch Bones, the TV show.

I love Jessamine Carter, the ME for Chattanooga, currently filling in for Knoxville as well. She drives a red Carrera, that fits her personality and allows her to cut travel time off her commute.

“Do men really believe that’s what six inches looks like? Try three and a half.”

Humor and death do go hand in hand, don’t they?

Dr. Brockton, is a forensic anthropologist and professor at the University of Tennessee and stages bodies at the body farm for research. I found myself chuckling at the writing even though the scenes were gruesome.

Jess and the doc are an item. She takes charge of that too. The banter between them is is humorous, snarky and fun, the teasing laced show more with sexual innuendo. They are complex characters and Jefferson Bass does a great job of bringing them to life. I must warn you though, he isn’t afraid to kill off his characters, so be careful who you become attached to.

Oops…didn’t see that coming. Now the real investigation begins. The details of deciphering clues, step by step, are stories I love to read about.

The writing is not as heavy and dark as some of the thrillers I have read, but it does raise a serious question for me. Why do we feel that by refusing to talk to the police, without a lawyer present, automatically makes us guilty. Just because you’re innocent, doesn’t mean the justice system will find that. Sometimes, instead of using clues to find the answer, they assume the answer and look for clues to make the pieces fit. I watch enough True Crime, and the crime TV shows to know this. That makes it easy for me to relate to what is coming down and it truly pisses me off.

Tragedy, love, sacrifice, revenge, anger and rage. Complex and fully developed characters allow me to sympathize and empathize with them, hoping they will find the answers they are looking for.

I didn’t see the ending happening the way it did, but I loved the dramatic flourish. Full of all the details for a great murder mystery with some thrills and suspense thrown in, along with characters to die for.

Talk about being close to your work, be sure and check out the bio of this fantastic writing duo.

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Flesh and Bone by Jefferson Bass.

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This was a book that kept me up past my bedtime. A very dead man is found tied to a tree dressed in women's undergarments and Dr Jessamine Carter, ME, asks Dr Bill Brockton to replicate the scene at his Body Farm to help determine time of death. Murder and mayhem ensue.

This is the second effort by the writing team Jefferson Bass - John Jefferson is a reporter and Bill Bass is the forensic anthropologist who created the real-life Body Farm on the U Tennessee campus. I read their first book, Carved in Bone just prior to this, and it was good but not great - this book was great.

I imagine it is difficult to put fictional characters into your own very real world. It's clear that Dr Brockton and Dr Bass have a a lot in common - I'm sure the show more descriptions of his work physical surroundings are dead-on (excuse the pun). What happens to Dr Brockton though has certainly never happened to Dr Bass - it's this close tie to reality that made it all the more exciting. I feel like an "insider" when it comes to crime investigation and procedure now.

I want to mention Art Buchanon. He's a real cop - a fingerprint expert and child-safety advocate that has been inserted without pseudonym into this (and the prior) story. His agenda in allowing this is straightforward - to raise awareness of the problems that confront him in real life: internet predators, the need for children's fingerprints, etc. There is an educational component surrounding these issues - during this novel his "character" was working undercover in online chat rooms, hoping to find and arrest another creep. He speaks freely of the need for laws and tighter parental controls in these issues. I think it's a great use of a book that promises to be well-read.

This was more than a great mystery with a lot of forensic science built in. There were some memorable characters (just wait till you meet Miss Georgia), some memorable crimes, and even a memorable trial. I cared what happened to the characters and couldn't wait to see what happened next, which is my mark of a great book. show less

I generally like to start book series by new authors at the very first one and follow the characters through their adventures. But I needed to pass two hours at Costco while they were putting new tires on our automobile, so this is the best that I could come up with.

This is not a badly written book, but it is entirely predictable. I even predicted the murder victim (and the murderer) before I had read a third of the book. I know it is hard to have any suspense if the protagonist knows who the killer is, but it does damage the build up of the protagonist being brilliant when he can't imagine the killer, who is perfectly obvious to every reader. I didn't mind the time I spent with this book. There are some very fine individual jokes and show more asides, but I don't think I will be returning to these characters. show less

Very good mystery focusing on forensic science, BUT ... I figured out both killers way before our hero did. And the ending was rather abrupt and neat. The writing team really moves the story along (which is a must for murder mysteries), and gives you some insight into the characters (which shows some maturity of writing style).

On the one hand an interesting book, revealing a bit about the work of the people in forensics, on the body farm.

As a crime book however, I found it quite predictable. The subject was surprising, but when you've read lots of crime novels, even that was detectable from what came before. All in all a nice read, but nothing special.

#2 in the Body Farm mysteries featuring Dr. Bill Brockton, founder of the research institute dedicated to learning more about how we decompose. In the first book, I enjoyed the forensic parts but was not crazy about the main character, and that trend continued in this book. For all that Dr. Bill Brockton is the consummate “nice guy,” I just can’t get attached to him, nor do I really care much about him—even when he’s suspected of murder. He’s just boring milquetoast for me. But I *did* enjoy the forensic aspect of the book a lot—if not for that, it’s doubtful I would have continued reading it. Lots of gory details, so if you’re squeamish, I wouldn’t read this book. Bill gets embroiled in the creationism/intelligent show more design vs. evolution debate in this book as well as working on the murder of a guy dressed in women’s clothes that appears to be a hate crime. When a colleague of Bill’s—whom he just happens to have slept with also—ends up murdered and displayed in his own Body Farm on top of the body they’re using to research that hate crime murder, he is a strong suspect in the case. Can’t see why, when ‘whodunit’ was as plain as the nose on your face, at least to me.

I’m debating whether to continue on in this series or not. The whole package just seems really uninspired, great forensic details or no. One of those, “It wasn’t really bad...it was okay, BUT”...kind of books. show less

Not my favorite. I should forgive it, this is early in a series and it's inevitable a writer will use genre tropes at some point. From my notes:
1) False accusation/framing of a main character is a cheap hacky plot substitute, and I always hate it.
2) Book two is waaaay too early to employ it. We barely know this character, not enough for this.
3) Our MC is remarkably naive and unaware of procedure when it suits the plot, but is very informed otherwise. That's also lazy writing. It's too early to get lazy.