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63 of 77 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Tempe tackles a biblical enigma., June 28, 2005
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.
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30 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Amazingly bad, July 8, 2005
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.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Boring - Annoying, July 25, 2005
I usually love Kathy Reichs books. This one I found incredibly boring, pedantic and uninteresting. The dialogue between Tempe and Ryan peculiar to say the least, staccato, juvenile and ridiculous. The storyline could have been told in 100 pages. Tempe came across as a know it all and lectured at every oportunity, half of which was incomprehensible to the layperson. Also some of the comments made couldn't be connected to the conversation. In actual fact had I been given the book without being told the author I would never have recognised it as being written by Kathy Reichs. Very disappointing.
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