Cross Bones [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Kathy Reichs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 2005

When an Orthodox Jew is shot in the head, Tempe Brennan is called to the scene. But while she tries to make sense of the fracture patterning, an unknown man slips her a photograph of a skeleton, telling her it holds the answer to the victim's death. Detective Andrew Ryan is also on the case and, as his relationship with Tempe heats up, they try to discover the identity of the victim and the significance of the photo. Tempe follows the trail of clues all the way to Israel where she learns of a shroud and a tomb that may have held the remains of Jesus's family. But the further she probes into the identity of the ancient skeleton, the more she seems to be putting herself in danger...

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Tempe" Brennan gets caught in mysteries past and present when she's called in to determine if illegal antiquities dealer Avram Ferris's gunshot death is murder or suicide. An acquaintance of Avram suggests the former: he hands Tempe a photograph of a skeleton, taken in Israel in 1963, and insists it's the reason Avram is dead. Tempe's longtime boyfriend, Quebecois detective Andrew Ryan, is also involved with the case, so the duo head to Israel where they attempt to solve the murder and a mystery revolving around a first-century tomb that may contain the remains of the family of Jesus Christ. This find threatens the worldwide Christian community, the Israeli and Jewish hierarchy and numerous illegal antiquity dealers, any of whom might be out to kill Tempe and Ryan. Not that Tempe notices. She has the habit of being oblivious to danger, which quickly becomes annoying, as does Reichs's tendency to end chapters with a heavy-handed cliffhanger ("His next words sent ice up my spine"). The plot is based on a number of real-life anthropological mysteries, and fans of such will have a good time, though thriller readers looking for chills and kills may not find the novel quite as satisfying.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

In the eighth entry in Reichs' popular mystery series, forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan spends more time contemplating biblical history than modern-day murder. A preface sets the stage, providing a bit of factual context for the puzzle that emerges when Tempe is given a photo of an articulated skeleton, which she is told is the key to the suspicious death of a slightly shady Orthodox Jewish merchant. The legend on the back of a photo leads to the bones themselves, 2,000-year-old remains that excite not only Tempe but also her friend Jake Drum, a biblical archaeologist, who suggests that the bones might even belong to Jesus himself! Unlike Tempe's previous forays into the world of crime, this episode isn't long on thrills. Instead, we get a fairly complicated lesson in biblical history, some radical theory to ponder, and the itch to read real-life religion professor James Tabor's upcoming book about Masada and ancient bones, The Jesus Dynasty, to which Reichs refers in an afterword. Yet another read-alike for Da Vinci Code fans. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Random House (June 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1856869857
• ISBN-13: 978-1856869850
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 0.9 x 4.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (121 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,830,926 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kathy Reichs, like her fictional creation, Temperance Brennan, is forensic anthropologist for the province of Quebec. She is Vice President of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, serves on the Canadian National Police Services Advisory Council, and is one of only fifty-six forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. A professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Dr. Reichs now divides her time between Charlotte and Montreal. Deja Dead, her debut novel, brought her fame when it became a New York Times bestseller and won the 1997 Ellis Award for Best First Novel. In 2007 Break No Bones was short- listed for the Ellis Award for Best Novel. Kathy Reichs is the inspiration for the television drama Bones; her latest novel featuring Temperance Brennan is Devil Bones. Her newest release, 206 Bones, is due out in the summer of 2009

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly bad, July 8, 2005

By 

N. Bonner (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cross Bones (Temperance Brennan Novels) (Hardcover)

I had read Kathy Reich's previous books and picked this one up not realizing the plot revolved around Orthodox Jews and Israel. As an Orthodox Jew who spent 10 years in Israel, I looked forward to seeing how Reich would deal with those topics. In her previous books, if she put a street in Montreal where it didn't belong, it didn't bother me because I didn't know any better. In this book, the constant barrage of factual errors was incredible. I can't believe that any of the folks she credits in the introduction actually read the final manuscript. Where to begin? An ultra-Orthodox man is killed under mysterious circumstances, which begins this investigation. Tempe Brennan gets a tip that he was killed because of something in an old photo--which turns out to be remains spirited away from the excavation at Masada in the 1960s. She and her boyfriend, Andy Ryan, then get to travel to Israel and run around trying to find out of these bones belonged to Jesus and/or his family members. I found the whole plot totally unbelievable. Throughout the book, Tempe and Ryan keep harping on the fact that Masada is a sacred place and claiming that Israelis would be upset if they knew that followers of Jesus had been up there. This is supposed to be the chief source of the book's tension. Baloney!

Masada is an important historical site with emotional value to secular Israelis as a symbol of Jewish survival, but it has no sacred status. The Nazarenes themselves were just another Jewish sect, no different from the many other sects that abounded at that time. They were just Jews who believed that Jesus was the messiah. Shortly before, there were Jews who believed that Bar Kochba was the messiah. Later, there would be Jews who thought Shabbatai Tzvi was the messiah. Why would anyone Jewish care if Nazarenes were on Masada? The decisive break between the Nazarenes and the Jewish people did not come until later. I can see why Christians would be upset by the theory that Jesus survived and had a family, but I don't see anything in this whole busines that would bother Israelis. So, the problem with the book is that if you don't really accept that people would kill and murder to prevent this information from getting out, the whole plot is just silly.

There were many small things, too. When Ryan and Brennan visit the grieving widow, she is wearing pants. No ultra-Orthodox woman wears pants, period. As they leave, she puts her hand on Ryan's hand. No ultra-Orthodox woman touches a man other than her husband. But what really blew my mind was that as Ryan and Brennan approach Jerusalem on their drive in from the airport, she gushes over the view of the Temple Mount. She must have Superman's vision because when anyone else enters Jerusalem from the highway they get a spectacular view of the central bus station and the national convention center. You have to drive clear across town to get to the Old City, where the Temple Mount is located. Even fiction has to have some basis in reality when you are using a real place. Her demonization of the Chevra Kedisha was appalling. These are brave people who spend much of their time collecting body parts after a terrorist attack and seeing that they have proper burial. They also try to insure that bones found in archeological sites receive proper burial, and I can't see that there is anything wrong with this. Human remains are more sacred than a mountain top and should be properly buried; archeologists can find enough artifacts to keep them busy on a site without having to treat bones like potshards. Native Americans feel the same way about their burial sites.

Aside from everything else, the Brennan-Ryan romance is getting stale. And he's starting to speak as if Janet Evanovich were writing the dialogue. I think this is my last Kathy Reich book.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bones of Contention, October 4, 2005

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cross Bones (Temperance Brennan Novels) (Hardcover)

This story is a change of pace for Temperance Brennan fans, who are used to a grimmer touch. While the present day mystery is real enough (the murder of an Orthodox Jewish importer who was apparently executed for his complicity in an antiquity smuggling business. But this story quickly takes second place when Brennan discovers that she might very well be performing an autopsy on the bones of Jesus Christ.

Years previous to these events in Montreal the archeological excavation at the fort of Masada in Isreal discovers a chamber with the bones of 25 individuals. Something about this discovery causes the archeologists to suppress the information (this actually happened). Somehow Avram Ferris, the victim, had gotten mixed up with as set of these bones and now it has cost him his lift.

But whose skeleton is it? Could is be a Christ who never actually died, one of the Jewish defenders of Masada, or a frightened Christian convert caught in the rush of the Roman effort to end the insurrection. And just to make things more convolute, when Temperance travels to Israel with Ryan, her lover, to investigate the crime, she is catapulted (literally) into a mystery that might very well be the Jesus family tomb.

This is an excellent intellectual thriller that has our forensic archaeologist and her detective lover trying to piece together both the current story and the events of 2000 years ago. Somehow the stories are related, and discovering how means solving the murder. Or dying if Temperance isn't careful. But prepare yourself for a delightful trip though history and modern Israeli politics with a story that is sometimes reminiscent of a Dan Brown novel and sometimes just hardboiled detection.

The story focuses primarily on Temperance, this often turns Ryan into either a sex object or a simple source of facts. But things are more interesting with him than they are without him so there's no cause to complain. Kathy Reichs adventures into new territory and makes a go of it.

66 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tempe tackles a biblical enigma., June 28, 2005

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cross Bones (Temperance Brennan Novels) (Hardcover)

Kathy Reichs latest thriller, "Cross Bones," features forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan, who divides her time between laboratories in North Carolina and Montreal. Tempe is currently in a committed relationship with hunky Canadian Detective Andrew Ryan (he of the Viking blue eyes), who is her partner both professionally and personally.

When the body of an Orthodox Jew named Avram Ferris turns up in a state of advanced putrefaction in Montreal, Tempe is called in to help determine the cause of death. Adding to the mystery, a stranger named Kessler passes Tempe a photograph, stating that it provides a clue as to why Ferris was killed. The photo shows a supine skeleton, and various elements in the picture indicate that it was taken at an archaeological dig. Tempe calls her pal, Jake Drum, a colleague at University of North Carolina-Charlotte and an expert in biblical archaeology, to shed some light on the photograph.

Jake believes that the picture was taken at Masada, Israel, in 1963. He further states that it may contain explosive evidence that Yigael Yadin, the archaeologist who excavated Masada, wanted to keep hidden from the world. Ferris' death and the puzzling photograph lead Tempe, Jake, and Ryan to Israel, where they encounter intrigue, violence, and ever more complex biblical conundrums involving skeletal remains.

The resemblance between "Cross Bones" and Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" is strictly intentional. In fact, Tempe mentions Brown's blockbuster bestseller more than once, with a wink to the reader, as if the Reichs is saying, "Sure, this is another 'Da Vinci Code' clone, but I'm putting my own spin on it." Unfortunately, Reichs doesn't quite pull it off. She populates her book with dozens of characters, including violent fanatics who want old bones to stay in the ground, Ferris's bereaved relatives, a corrupt Israeli antiquities official, and a priest with a deadly secret. This book is so convoluted that Reichs is forced to spend many pages explaining the various plot points, and this slows the narrative down considerably. It is obvious that the author has conducted extensive research about Masada and Jesus, and I applaud Reichs's scholarly attention to detail. However, by the end of the novel, the lengthy explanations become a bit wearying and repetitious.

Much of "Cross Bones" is formulaic. As in most novels of this type, the heroine places herself in unnecessarily perilous situations more than once, and then scrambles to save her life. There are frantic chase scenes, stilted, cutesy, and preachy dialogue, the obligatory twists and turns, excessive reliance on exclamation points and italics to grab the reader's attention, and, of course, a final violent confrontation. The characters are devoid of any depth, and although the biblical riddles that Reichs offers are as intriguing as any of Dan Brown's, many more questions are raised than Reichs can ever satisfactorily answer. I sincerely hope that in the foreseeable future, we will see an end to the spate of "Da Vinci Code" imitations.