The Devil's Bones (Body Farm Series #3) [NOOK Book]

( 138 )

Overview

A burned car sits on a Tennessee hilltop, a woman's lifeless, charred body seated inside. Forensic anthropologist Bill Brockton's job is to discover the truth hidden in the fire-desecrated corpse. Was the woman's death accidental . . . or was she incinerated to cover up her murder?

But his research into the effect of flame on flesh and bone is about to collide with reality like a lit match meeting spilled gasoline. The arrival of a mysterious package—a set of suspiciously ...

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The Devil's Bones (Body Farm Series #3)

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More About This Book

Overview

A burned car sits on a Tennessee hilltop, a woman's lifeless, charred body seated inside. Forensic anthropologist Bill Brockton's job is to discover the truth hidden in the fire-desecrated corpse. Was the woman's death accidental . . . or was she incinerated to cover up her murder?

But his research into the effect of flame on flesh and bone is about to collide with reality like a lit match meeting spilled gasoline. The arrival of a mysterious package—a set of suspiciously unnatural cremated remains—is pulling Brockton toward a nightmare too inhuman to imagine. And an old nemesis is waiting in the shadows to put him to the ultimate test, one that could reduce Brockton's life to smoldering ruins.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

The lack of a strong central plot undercuts the third forensic thriller by bestseller Bass, the team of Dr. Bill Bass, founder of Tennessee's world-renowned Body Farm, and journalist Jon Jefferson (after 2007's Flesh and Bone). Two cases occupy Dr. Bass's fictional alter ego, Dr. Bill Brockton-the death of Mary Latham, a 47-year-old Knoxville native, whose charred remains were found in a burned-out car, and a disreputable Georgia crematorium that simply dumped bodies on its grounds. These probes soon take a backseat to a cat-and-mouse game with the doctor's arch nemesis, Garland Hamilton, who tried to frame him for murder in Flesh and Bone. When Hamilton escapes from incarceration before going to trial, Brockton must keep looking over his shoulder. While a smattering of Bass's trademark authentic forensic detail lifts this main narrative thread, a more focused look at a single case might have made the novel a better read. (Feb.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
School Library Journal

As this third thriller (after Carved in Boneand Flesh and Bone) by the pseudonymous Bass (the writing team of Dr. Bill Bass, forensic anthropologist and founder of University of Tennessee's Body Farm, and science writer Jon Jefferson) opens, Bill Brockton is back at work on the Body Farm after the recent murder of his lover and an attempt on his own life. The killer, Garland Hamilton, nurses a fanatical grudge against Brockton. Before his trial begins, Hamilton escapes and is presumed to have died in a mountain cabin fire. In the meantime, Brockton uses his skills and those of his graduate student Miranda in various unrelated cases, including that of a Georgia crematorium stacking bodies in the woods and providing fake ashes to the families. The authors juggle several quickly moving narratives until the final confrontation between Brockton and his nemesis. Buy wherever forensic fiction is popular, and be aware of several graphic scenes and descriptions. [See Prepub Alert, LJ10/15/07.]
—A.J. Wright

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Booklist
"[A] fine thriller...this third installment is the best of a steadily improving series, but it’s doubtful we’ve seen the finest moments yet."
Charlotte Observer
"A superb mystery...written with more flair and literary sensibility than anything by John Grisham."
USA Today
"[A] unique corpse, solid science, quirky humor and a lovable protagonist."
Emily A. Craig
"A gripping murder mystery."
Michael M. Baden
"[F]ascinating...a delightful course in "how to examine a skeleton," and the intrigues of the Tennessee moonshine backwoods!"
Stephen White
"CARVED IN BONE introduces a captivating protagonist and is full of obscure, fascinating forensics. [A] fine new talent."
Kathy Reichs
"Carved in Bone brims with terrific forensic detail . . . the real deal."
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780061828539
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 10/13/2009
  • Series: Body Farm Series , #3
  • Sold by: Harpercollins
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 320
  • Sales rank: 661
  • File size: 634 KB

Meet the Author

Jefferson Bass is the writing team of Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson. Dr. Bass, a world-renowned forensic anthropologist, founded the University of Tennessee's Anthropology Research Facility—the Body Farm—a quarter century ago. He is the author or coauthor of more than two hundred scientific publications, as well as a critically acclaimed memoir about his career at the Body Farm, Death's Acre. Dr. Bass is also a dedicated teacher, honored as National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. Jon Jefferson is a veteran journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. His writings have been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today, and Popular Science, and broadcast on National Public Radio. The coauthor of Death's Acre, he is also the writer and producer of two highly rated National Geographic documentaries about the Body Farm.

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Read an Excerpt

The Devil's Bones
A Novel

Chapter One

The last drop of daylight was fading from the western sky—a draining that seemed more a suffocation than a sunset, a final faint gasp as the day died of heatstroke. To the east, a dull copper moon, just on the downhill side of full, struggled above the crest of the Great Smoky Mountains. From where I stood, in a ridgetop pasture above the confluence of the Holston and French Broad rivers—above the headwaters of the Tennessee—I had a ringside view of the demise of the day and the wavering birth of the night.

Just below the ridge, across the river on Dickinson Island, the lights of the Island Home Airport winked on, etching the runway's perimeter in white and the taxiway in cobalt blue. The main landmarks of downtown Knoxville shimmered a few miles farther downstream—two tall office towers, a wedge-shaped Mayan-looking Marriott, the high bridges spanning the river, and the looming waterfront complex of Baptist Hospital. A mile beyond those, as the fish swims, lay the University of Tennessee campus and Neyland Stadium, where the UT Volunteers packed in a hundred thousand football fans every game. Football season would kick off with a night game in three weeks, and the stadium's lights were ablaze tonight, in some sort of preseason scrimmage against the darkness. The lights loomed high above the field; a series of additions to the stadium—an upper deck and skyboxes—had taken the structure higher and higher into the sky; another expansion or two and Neyland Stadium would be the city's tallest skyscraper. The lights themselves were almost blinding, even at this distance, but thewater softened their reflection to quicksilver, turning the Tennessee into a dazzling, incandescent version of Moon River. It was stunning, and I couldn't help thinking that even on an off-season night Neyland Stadium was still the tail that wagged Knoxville.

Tucked beneath the stadium, along a curving corridor that echoed its ellipse, was UT's Anthropology Department, which I'd spent twenty-five years building from a small undergraduate major to one of the world's leading Ph.D. programs. A quarter mile long and one room wide, Anthropology occupied the outer side of the stadium's dim, windowless second-floor hallway. Mercifully, the classrooms and labs and graduate-student offices did possess windows, though the view was a bizarre and grimy one, consisting mainly of girders and cross braces—the framework supporting those hundred thousand foot-stomping football fans in the bleachers, keeping them from crashing down amid the countless human bones shelved beneath them.

Many of the bones catalogued in the bowels of Neyland Stadium had arrived by way of the Anthropology Research Facility—the Body Farm—a three-acre patch of wooded hillside behind UT Medical Center. At any given moment, a hundred human corpses were progressing from fresh body to bare bones there, helped along by legions of bacteria and bugs, plus the occasional marauding raccoon or possum or skunk. By studying the events and the timing as bodies decomposed under a multitude of experimental conditions—nude bodies, clothed bodies, buried bodies, submerged bodies, fat bodies, thin bodies, bodies in cars and in sheds and in rolls of scrap carpeting—my graduate students and colleagues and I had bootstrapped the Body Farm into the world's leading source of experimental data on both what happens to bodies after death and when it happens. Our body of research, so to speak, allowed us to pinpoint time since death with increasing precision. As a result, any time police—police anywhere—asked for help solving a real-world murder, we could check the weather data, assess the degree of decomposition, and give an accurate estimate of when the person had been killed.

Tonight would yield a bit more data to the scientific literature and a few hundred more bones to the collection. We were conducting this experiment miles from the Body Farm, but I had brought the Farm with me—two of its inhabitants anyhow—to this isolated pasture. I couldn't conduct tonight's research so close to downtown, the UT campus, and the hospital. I needed distance, darkness, and privacy for what I was about to do.

I turned my gaze from the city's glow and studied the two cars nestled in the high grass nearby. In the faint light, it was hard to tell they were rusted-out hulks. It was also difficult to discern that the two figures behind the steering wheels were corpses: wrecked bodies driving wrecked cars, on what was about to become a road trip to hell.

The tow-truck driver who had brought the vehicles out to the UT Ag farm a few hours before—minus their cadaverous drivers—clearly thought I was crazy. "Most times," he'd said, "I'm hauling cars like this to the junkyard, not from the junkyard."

I smiled. "It's an agricultural experiment," I'd said. "We're transplanting wrecks to see if a new junkyard takes root."

"Oh, it'll take root all right," he said. "I guaran-damn-tee you. Word gets out there's a new dump here, you'll have you a bumper crop of cars and trucks and warshin' machines before you know it." He spit a ropy stream of tobacco juice, which rolled across the dirt at his feet and then quivered dustily for a moment. "Shit, I know all kinds of folks be glad to help with that experiment."

I laughed. "Thanks anyhow," I said. "Actually, I lied. We are doing an experiment, but it's not agricultural, it's forensic. We're going to cremate a couple of bodies in these cars and study the burned bones."

He eyed me suspiciously, as if I might be about to enlist him forcibly as one of the research subjects, but then his face broke into a leathery grin. "Aw, hell, you're that bone-detective guy, ain't you? Dr. Bodkin?"

"Brockton"— I smiled again—"but that's close enough."

"I knew you looked familiar. My wife's a big fan of all them forensic shows on TV. She talks about donating her body to you'uns. But I don't think I could hardly handle that."

The Devil's Bones
A Novel. Copyright © by Jefferson Bass. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4
( 138 )
Rating Distribution

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(64)

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(45)

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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 139 Customer Reviews

  • Posted Wed Jun 29 00:00:00 EDT 2011

    more from this reviewer

    Soooo entertaining!

    Another superb Jefferson Bass

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted Tue Feb 22 00:00:00 EST 2011

    Best one yet!

    This book was so captivating and irresistable that I read it virtually nonstop. My favorite one thus far, I cannot wait to download and read the next one!

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted Sat Feb 27 00:00:00 EST 2010

    more from this reviewer

    I Also Recommend:

    Carved in Bone (Body Farm Series #1)
    Bones of Betrayal (Body Farm Series #4)

    Forensics

    You have to love or at least like forensics to read these stories. They are full of information related to the "body farm" in Tennessee. I find this place fascinating and the work they do there just as fascinating. Haven taken the course offered at one time through Barnes and Noble gave me a sneak peek into the thinking of the people behind the CSI's and what they do as well as watching it on television but.... these books, all three give you a whole new look into the working of a pathologist and exactly what is involved in their work. Well written, funny, and the characters are believable. I love these books and hope there will be more in the series.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted Thu Apr 14 00:00:00 EDT 2011

    I recommend

    This is the first time I have read any of Jefferson Bass' books and I really enjoyed it. I have ordered the next two books in this series.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted Sat Mar 19 00:00:00 EDT 2011

    loved it

    great series!

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Mon Mar 30 00:00:00 EDT 2009

    I Also Recommend:

    Break No Bones (Temperance Brennan Series #9)
    Devil Bones (Temperance Brennan Series #11)
    Bones - Season 3
    Bones - Season 1
    Bones - Season 2

    Thrilling Read

    This book is great, especially if you enjoy a scientific base to your average murder mystery. Although it is part of a series, it has many stand alone qualities; I have not read Jefferson Bass' other books, and this was still completely understandable. It is a great book for all forensic anthropology enthusiasts!

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted Sat Nov 15 00:00:00 EST 2008

    more from this reviewer

    I Also Recommend:

    Death's Acre : Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm-Where the Dead Do Tell Tales
    Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science

    "The Devil's Bones"

    An excellent book. Jefferson Bass' series is wonderfully written and engrossing. Excellent characters and intriguing murders.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Mon Mar 03 00:00:00 EST 2008

    Not the best, but still strong

    While The Devil's Bones, the third forensic thriller by two-person authorial team Jefferson Bass, does not quite live up to the high standard set by previous entries, it's still a compelling read. This time, a pair of cases challenge Dr. Bill Brockton's investigative acumen: the death of a woman whose charred remains are discovered in a burned-out car, and a shady Georgia crematorium with some really unconscionable business practiced. If all that weren't enough, the nefarious Garland Hamilton (last seen in 2007's Flesh and Bone) shows up to cause more trouble. Some reviewers have complained that Bass muddied the plot of this mystery by throwing in everything but the proverbial kitchen sink, and that's a valid complaint. By way of comparison, my favorite new thriller of '08 - Crimson Orgy by Austin Williams - weaves a tight narrative that grows more claustrophobic and suspenseful with each chapter. The Devil's Bones could arguably have benefited from some tightening, but fans of the series will still want to give this one a look.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Fri Feb 15 00:00:00 EST 2008

    Bass throws in too many bones

    In this third 'Body Farm' thriller, Jefferson Bass juggles three different plotlines, and the result is a mystery that is diluted by one too many of them. Not only does the series' hero, forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton, have two different cases to investigate, he's also dealing with the before-trial escape of his nemesis, former medical examiner Garland Hamilton, who murdered Brockton's lover and then tried to frame him in 'Flesh and Bone'. Hamilton's body is eventually discovered in the smoking ruin of a cabin where he was hiding out, but Brockton is not so sure it's him. Meanwhile, the charred remains of a woman named Mary Latham have been found in a burned-out car, and an out-of-state crematorium has apparently simply dumped the bodies of it's customers' loved ones instead of properly cremating them. I think 'The Devil's Bones' would have been a lot stronger if Bass had concentrated on the Hamilton storyline, throwing more twists and turns in that direction, while giving forensics fans something to chew on with a tighter Latham investigation and ditching the crematorium subplot entirely. Still, this is a step up (in my opinion) from the recent Scarpetta novels, not to mention the less-than-compelling Temperance Brennan books.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted Sun May 06 00:00:00 EDT 2012

    The second book I read by JeffersonBass and I loved it as much a

    The second book I read by JeffersonBass and I loved it as much as the first. Well written. One of those books that is not a good idea to start reading before bed (like I did) because the next thing you know your alarm is going off and you still haven't slept because you are still reading the book... and you have to get ready for work but you just have to know wht it about to happen...

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Tue Feb 07 00:00:00 EST 2012

    Great

    Enjoyed this very much.

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  • Posted Fri Jan 27 00:00:00 EST 2012

    Highly Recommended

    I loved reading this one! It was full of suspense and thrills to keep me turning the pages!

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  • Posted Fri Jan 06 00:00:00 EST 2012

    Excellent characters and gripping story!

    If you are a fan of crime/forensic cases and stories, you will truly enjoy the Body Farm Series. This, like the prior two books, is terrific. The author combines great character depth, intriguing story lines, suspense and humor. I highly recommend it!

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  • Posted Sat Aug 20 00:00:00 EDT 2011

    Loved this book

    I had read the fifth book first and just loved it. Great characters, some of the most detailed and unique I've ever seen. The stories are complex, multifaceted, and if you like forensic stories, Patricia Cornwell, autopsies, murder investigations, etc, then this is a must for you. Extreme technical accuracy. When we read book #5, I went out and bought the first four in the series and my wife and I devoured them one by one. It is not necessary to read them in sequence, but it will help as some events and characters are referred to downstream and come into play in subsequent stories (in a peripheral way). Start with Carved in Bone (#1), then Flesh & Bone, The Devil's Bones, Bones of Betrayal, The Bone Thief, then The Bone Yard (hardback as I write this). You won't be disappointed!

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  • Posted Fri May 20 00:00:00 EDT 2011

    Not his best so far

    He is a very good writter, but the suspense the was in the last book is not here. At least not til the last chapter It was a good read but ended very ubruptly.

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  • Posted Sat May 09 00:00:00 EDT 2009

    divils bones

    didn't impress me . Story line flat, did not keep me interested. Hard to finish the book

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted Mon Mar 02 00:00:00 EST 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Reviewed for Midwest Book Review

    Forensic anthropologist Bill Brockton is trying to figure out who murdered Mary Latham and how her car caught fire and burned so extensively when his criminal defense attorney gives him what are claimed to be the cremains (cremated remains) of his aunt, which look more like concrete mix than bone ash. With the help of forensic scientist Art Bohanan, Brockton investigates the crematorium in Georgia that was responsible for the cremation but keeps butting up against stone walls. Eventually, he discovers a horror the likes of which he has never seen before. Meanwhile, he learns that his nemesis, former medical examiner Garland Hamilton, has escaped from prison and is on the prowl. Knowing he's in Hamilton's sites, Brockton is relieved to learn Hamilton's charred body is discovered at a fire scene in Cooke County. However, as Brockton soon finds out, things are not always as they seem.

    This third installment in the Body Farm series is, as usual, chock full of interesting forensics information relayed through Brockton and his assistant, Miranda. Readers may find the book distracting as it seems to meander along from one investigation to the other, then dashes off to the conflict between Brockton and Hamilton. Although the three mysteries within the plot are good ones, perhaps focusing on one or two would provide a stronger read. The forensics investigations help buffer the distraction and will keep the reader invested throughout the book.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Sat Mar 08 00:00:00 EST 2008

    very good read

    If you're a fan of Patricia Cornwall and Kathy Reichs you'll like the team of Jefferson Bass

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  • Posted Tue Dec 09 00:00:00 EST 2008

    more from this reviewer

    Gripping mystery

    Forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton has built up the anthropological department at the University of Tennessee to the point it is one of the best in the country. He is beginning to heal from the murder of his lover his beloved Dr. Jess Carter at the hands of a medical examiner Dr. Garland Hamilton who hated Jess because she was going to be the next medical examiner for the state. He loathed Bill because the pointed out a major error in Hamilton¿s findings that could have put an innocent on death row.------------- The Body Farm is involved in solving on going investigations in which people need answers. Bill¿s lawyer wants to find out what happened to the remains of his aunt because what the crematorium gave him back was not her ashes. The lawyer wants to learn the truth of what happened to the bodies sent there. He also has to figure out how a man who was in Las Vegas could have had his car explode with his wife sitting in Tennessee. Overlaying all this is the fact that Hamilton has escaped from prison and when the cabin he was staying in blow up, Bill somehow has to find a way to know if the skeleton that is there is the escaped criminal or an unidentified body that Hamilton used to throw the police bill off his scent.-------------- THE DEVIL¿S BONES is a fascinating look at how forensic anthropology helps the police solves crimes. The protagonist is a brilliant person who likes to solve it because he is as much a police investigator as a college instructor. Although the escape from emergency room Hamilton was in seems overkill (no pun intended) fans will love reading about these investigative techniques that is opening new avenues in solving crimes.--------- Harriet Klausner

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Mon Sep 26 00:00:00 EDT 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

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