Customer Reviews

The Bone Man

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I heartily recommend the foregoing one-star reviews. They provide a pretty good feel for the flaws and foibles of this book.

One reviewer refers to the heroine--for want of a better word--as a "dingbat." I cannot find such kindness in my own heart. She is a complete idiot who, on her best day, could not rise to the commonsense and gravitas of Lucy Ricardo. Her closest female friends seem no smarter. She regards herself as in love with a man who seems to drag his knuckles on the ground. This love manifests itself purely as physical lust. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but it does not lead to sparkling, Noel Coward-like dialogue. That particular light-of-her-life, by the way, when he is not running most of the way across the continent to save her, periodically displays fits of jealousy. This is partially explained by the fact, as she herself acknowledges, that she has two-timed him with another man--one with whom he continually finds her playing footsie, or apparently worse. It's all quite innocent, of course, or so she must repeatedly explain to us.

Now, as to the plot, it's totally plausible if we only assume that everybody in Boston, the States of Maine and New Mexico and various points in between is a complete doofus.

This is my first encounter with the author and her character. It is also assuredly my last.

One star for plumbing the Dan Brownian depths.

Sorry, but Tally is such a complete idiot in this book it is more frustrating than exciting as the action goes. Everything she does just makes the whole situation worse and gets someone else hurt or killed. It's written so that it is completely clear to the reader that she is an idiot - yet over and over again she runs from every "protector" and into someone's fist/gun/whatever...chapter after chapter of the same irritating pattern. Totally not recommended - kind of liked the previous books too. Bummer.

Very disappointing. From a horrible narration to a flimsy plot, I'm not sure which was worse. Stiefel evidently ran out of ideas for plot suspense so she substituted suspense with an unending smackdown of her heroine. I'm not sure many people could have take the abuse Tally did and live to talk about it. The magic/supernatural aspect of the book was ill conceived and poorly developed. As far as the narration, I'm not sure I've ever heard a narrator speak so slowly, she must have added at least 3 hours to the book with her plodding narration. Won't buy another audio book narrated by Andrea Bates.

Sometimes a good narrator can save a dull book. In this case, Andrea Bates, the narrator from Books in Motion who published the audio version seemed as unengaged as a narrator could be. However, given the writing she had to work with here, I find I can't blame her for the lackluster performance. I, in fact, found that I could not go on after about a third of the book.

1) The writing is repetitive. I don't know how many times total she was going to mention her deceased foster mother Vada, but I had my fill by Page 63.

2) The main character (first person point of view) is a twit. She walks in on a murder scene in a pathologist's (?) office, thinks that the murderer may still be in the room and then sits down facing the corpse and uses her cell phone to summon help. No one, it seemed heard her initial scream-- even though it is during office hours. Oh, yeah, and there is a clue written in the blood of victim that disappears, possibly in the spreading pool. The phone that she was using to call also had a camera function that came into play both earlier and later. Did she think to take a picture of the writing or the crime scene? No, she didn't.

3) The first part of the book involves a skull that is thought to be native American because it was found in a pot that was thought to be ancient. It doesn't appear that anyone consulted a physical anthropologist or archeaologist. They just assumed because it was found at the Peabody during an installation that it had be old because the Peabody knew their stuff. In fact the author twisted the story into a pretzel trying to explain why they couldn't do any scientific testing on the skull. But a facial reconstruction is done. (What?) Then there is a scene where someone from the National Geographic is handcuffed because he demands to see and photograph the skull and the reconstruction. (What?) Then there are info dumps about Southwestern Native American culture including names of native artists that seem to serve no purpose.

And if anyone could explain to me why law enforcement would have been hanging onto what was presumably archaeological remains I would be grateful.

I cannot recommend listening to this book. If you must read it go to the library for a copy. That way you won't feel like you've wasted money on top of time.

Unintentionally absurd. Be prepared to guffaw right out loud. Shame on Robert Parker for the cover blurb.

First Sentence: More than 365 days had passed since Veda died

Tally Whyte had been the founder and director of the Massachusetts Grief Assistance program. After taking some time off, she has come back to visit and is immediately attracted to the case of a human skull that has been found in an ancient Anasazi pot. Not only is the skull contemporary but, when reconstructed, looks exactly like Tally's friend, supposedly on a buying trip in the southwest. Tally is off to the southwest.

It starts with a huge coincidence, and by page 79, I was so annoyed with this book, I couldn't continue it. The protagonist was annoying in the extreme, her constant, strident overreaction to the men in her life trying to protect her drove me mad. She did things that just didn't make sense to me. The plot was weak and, even as little as I read, at times, absurd. The dialogue was awful.

Too many other books were waiting for me to have spent any more time with this one.

Vicki Stiefel has outdone herself with this Tally Whyte adventure. I have read every one of her books and this one just leaps out as the best yet. The story is masterful with so many twists and turns that once begun, if you can put this page turner down, I will be surprised. I have ready many murder mysteries, including those of Tony Hillerman and The Bone Man, which takes the reader to the cultural and spiritual heart of the American Southwest is my favorite so far. I think that Stiefel has fallen in love with her character and can now write with such vision and excitement that we are lucky to go along for the ride. Brava.

I bought this series as audiobooks directly from Books-in-Motion. I enjoyed the first three, but this one was just nuts. The plot was not very plausable, the main character turned into a complete idiot and the narration was among the worst I have ever heard and I listen to a lot of audiobooks. Andrea Bates started out trying to make her reading so dramatic that it was just irritating. Later on it became draging and almost sing-songy. The audiobook would have been slightly better if Stephanie Brush who did the first three had read it, but even she would't have had a lot to work with. I don't know who makes the decisions about audiobook narration, the recording company or the author, but this narrator was a bad decision. I hope Books-in-Motion reads some of the reviews people write about books they publish. There is no place on their web site that I could find to write a review.

Vicki Stiefel, in THE BONE MAN, once again has proven she has a unique style of character and plot development, plus a pace of story, that merits a place among today's top mystery writers.
This fourth offering in a series, which features Tally Whyte, a homicide counselor based in Boston, takes the reader from Boston to Martha's Vineyard, to the wilds of New Mexico, and into the fabled Chaco Canyon where Native American sprits and modern day dangers collide in a chilling climax.
So, if the angst of Patricia Cornwell's Dr. Kay Scarpetta has sated your reading palate, if you are tired of vicariously joining Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone to dine on Quarter-pounders with fires, then make room on your reading shelf for a lady whose writing stands shoulder-to-shoulder with these well-known writers.
One word of warning is offered. Vicki Stiefel has given new meaning to the word INTENSE.

This is my first reading of Vicki Stiefel, and over all, I liked it. the plot was good, I had a bit of trouble at first with her (writer's)dialect ~ her idioms were different than I am used to. And I had a bit of a time figuring out (in the beginning) who was friend and who was foe in her repertoire of characters. Also I thought her heroine was a bit of a ding bat. Maybe because she got hit on the head ~ but sometimes she just acted idiotic. I hate to see women portrayed as stupid by women authors ~ her intuition was, in the end, right on however, so she did pull it off ~ thanks to the men who came to her rescue ~ SHEESH! (I will not recommend it to my nieces or grand daughter however, since the end result was not because of any brilliance on the part of her character). But since, over all, I did enjoy the book I will read more of her work and hope that her character can at least learn over time.