Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is nearly buried under a series of varied homicides that play like a mix tape of her own greatest hits. Veronica Kwalwasser is found decapitated inside a plastic bag labeled "Here's Johnny!" in a deserted privy, her severed eyeball thoughtfully left in a package on Tempe's porch. Gangbanger Miguel Sanchez is missing an ear when he's discovered. Frank Boldonado has been hanging from a tall tree for a long time. All of them have been killed in different ways, but Tempe tells Det. Donna Henry that she's certain their deaths all have something in common. And she's right: They're all copycat versions of otherwise unrelated deaths Tempe investigated years ago. Clearly the killer has a special grudge against Tempe, but in "America in the age of rage," where everyone reserves the right to unlimited anger against anyone else, how can she begin to look for the motive that drives the killer? And given the wide array of malefactors who have it in for her, how can she narrow the field before her daughter, Katy Petersons, a toughened Army veteran who's gone suspiciously missing, ends up paying the ultimate price for whatever it is that her mother once did? Reichs supplies a great hook, a double helping of homicides past and present, and all the meticulous forensic details and throwaway cliffhanger chapter endings you'd expect from this celebrated series, though the motive behind the murders is significantly less interesting than the ghoulish crimes themselves. Half a loaf--the first half. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The new Temperance Brennan novel (the twenty-first, if you're counting) opens with a shocker: a human eyeball is delivered to Brennan's home. Why? Who sent it? Later, the discovery of a mummified human corpse adds another layer to Brennan's confusion. When evidence of more killings is found, Tempe figures out the connection: someone, it seems, is deliberately re-enacting crimes from cases early in her career as a forensic anthropologist. Rounding up the old gang from some of those old cases, including Skinny Slidell, now a private detective, Tempe struggles to find a motive. Reichs is on an incredible streak: in the entire Brennan series up to this point, there is not a bad book in the bunch. Some are better than others, but they're all good. Some, like this one, are exemplary. The writing is especially sharp here; the story is intense; and Tempe is at her snarky, brook-no-idiots, don't-mess-with-me best. As usual, too, Reichs draws on her professional experience to give the proceedings a solid, realistic footing (she, like her hero, is a forensic anthropologist). In this consistently satisfying series, rank this one near the top.

At the start of bestseller Reichs's elaborately plotted 21st Temperance Brennan novel (after 2021's The Bone Code), the forensic anthropologist finds a package on her doorstep in Charlotte, N.C., containing a human eyeball "impaled like a bug on a pin." Her search to discover its provenance leads her to an abandoned outhouse on the campus of Belmont Abbey College, where a body matching the DNA of the eye is found. Other victims turn up, each in macabre circumstances. "Some psycho is imitating my old cases," Brennan observes, and the killer's violence is escalating. Brennan's boyfriend, Andrew Ryan, a former Quebec homicide detective turned PI, shows up to help with the investigation. Meanwhile, Brennan's daughter, Katy, honorably discharged from the Army after two stints in Afghanistan, has returned to Charlotte and is finding her way back into civilian life. Jim-dandy details about autopsies and the significance of bones compensate in part for a plot with too much rehashing of old cases and Brennan too often rushing into dangerous situations without calling for backup. Established fans will enjoy spending time with old friends. Agent: Deneen Howell, Williams & Connolly. (July)

Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is enjoying the company of her daughter, fresh out of the army, when they discover a box on the back porch containing a human eyeball. GPS coordinates traced on the eyeball take them to a Benedictine monastery and another bloody find, after which they stumble upon a mummified corpse in a park. All these unpleasantries imitate cases in Temperance's past. With a 150,000-copy first printing.