Humor is not Kathy Reichs's strong point. Try as hard as she might (and she REALLY tried!), Sue Grafton or Janet Evanovich, she is not. The sarcastic sniping she sprinkled into "Break No Bones"--especially between Ryan and the snarky, incredibly un-likeable Pete--was just plain forced. If anything, Tempe's intense seriousness was what made her fun to read. I disliked the tone of this book so much, I didn't finish it. Who did it? I didn't really care.

Watched "Bones" on Fox TV. I enjoyed it so I started hunting for the first book in the series. I hate starting in the middle of series books. Once I started reading Reichs and I got over the shock that literary Brennan and TV Brennan are based on Reichs, they are still different. I missed Booth at first. But as I read on and was able to view each version as its own work I really enjoyed the books. I love the forensic stuff. Fans of forensics will enjoy this series because Brennan is not a CSI as such. She is an anthropologist first. Her personal life suffers because of the travel. Shes curious. It isnt a mystery in the end as to who commited the crimes as it is in many books. Not like, well, did he or did he not kill the victim. With Reichs she lets you know who and how she goes about proving it. I hate movies and books that leave the ending up to me. Please, I paid for the work...I want the whole aspect. Plot, beginning, middle, end and outcome. I just got the last three books to finish the series thus far. I also still enjoy "Bones".

BREAK NO BONES is definately worth reading as it is a good mystery with good characters and lots of action. Temperance Brennan is at it again, finding bones where they shouldn't be and then becoming a player in a pretty complicated plot. Tempe deals with a county sheriff who is not a typical stereotype in that while he needs to convinced before he takes action, he does eventually act upon real facts and does seem competent in his job. Tempe also has the awkward situation of having her estranged husband and her lover together with her in one house. I believe this was supposed to be somewhat comic, but I just got the feeling that Kathy Reichs missed on this situation. Anyway, neither Pete nor Ryan was much of a hero in this one. The real saving hero turned out to be someone completely unexpected and that is why BREAK NO BONES did not get 5 stars from me. The climax just seemed too hard to believe for my taste. None the less, this book was a page turner as I have found all the Temperance Brennan novels to be so far. This isn't the best one, but it's much better than a lot of books I've read and so, I say, go ahead and give it a chance.

Once again, we are taken back to the days of yesteryear. Our heroine, Dr. Temperance Brennan (Tempe to her friends) is called on by the Charleston County Coroner (an old friend) to help her sort out a murder. Since the body is mostly bones, our girl - nicknamed Bones - is the person to call. One of only 50 forensic anthropologist license in her field, no one is more expert than Tempe. (Note: this is a parallel world to the one on TV.)

While taking over a student dig summer course on a coastal island, Tempe finds sixteen indian skeletons (which have nothing at all to do with this case). From there she is called to see a body that has been mixed in with the old skeletons. This one has only been buried for a few years.
When Tempe examines the skeleton, she finds that it has strange fractures on the neck (cervical) vertebrae. A second body is found hanging in the local State Forest. When Tempe examines that body it also has those strange neck fractures.

In between trying to solve these murders (and some others) she also has to deal with: her estranged husband, her semi-lover from Quebec, the stolid local Sheriff, her friend the Coroner, and other assorted locals.
The story follows a straight line (time-wise) with some segues and tangential stories thrown in but at all times keeps moving forward like a shark. In the end the only line not tied up is the one between Tempe and her lover-Detective from Quebec. Good Job Kathy.

Zeb Kantrowitz

I had avoided Kathy Reichs' books for a while, finding her plots somewhat repetitive and was getting bored with how (to me) unnecessarily complicated Temperance's personal relationships were and yet they were just going in the same circles. So I picked this one up, not sure what to expect. I'm glad I did. Yes, her relationships are still complicated, but I liked the direction this book took them in. And yes, along with another reader, I agree that Reich's writing can be almost formulaic (she always ends her chapters on a cliffhanger note...an effective if obvious technique). All that being said, this was an enjoyable read and I'm looking forward to reading the next one.

I did not make it past the first CD so I am not sure how the entire book is. I listen to books on CD constantly as I have a lengthy commute to work each day. I have never watched the TV show Bones so have no clue about that. All I know is that whoever reads this book is monotonous. Maybe it is the story itself. I will always give a book a chance by listening to the entire first CD, which is what I did with this. I am used to much better reading from the likes of Joe Mantegna (James Patterson novel reader)and Lorelei King (Janet Evanovich novel reader). I can't have a book putting me to sleep. Sorry

this book was great. More realistic about relationships and criminal justice information. I have always liked Kathy Reichs and her books. Another great novel by this author.

I heard about Kathy Reichs after getting into the crazy world of the television series "Bones". I don't understand how this author got so popular (or rather, stayed popular). The writing style in "Break No Bones" is not only abysmal but completely frustrating. Her sentences are short and choppy, lack fluidity, and don't develop characters. I wanted to get into the story but because of these flaws I just couldn't.


-Rebekah Athey

A Kathy Reichs novel.
Will there be lots of one sentence paragraphs?
Yes.
Many of the same questions asked over and over by the narrator to herself?
Yes.
Will there be lots of one sentence paragraphs?
Yes.

Just dig in to a Kathy Reichs book and you are on your way to a great read every time.

While I generally enjoy the Tempe books - and this is overall no exception - this is not my favorite of the series. Tempe is again undecided and scattered through half the book - does she love Pete or does she love Ryan? Is the guilty party Marshall or Daniels or someone else altogether? She's constantly "all in a froth" and "agitated," seemingly forgetful of the fact that she is not a member of the police force and should therefore, perhaps, simply give them the information she is aware of and then stay out of their way. Then again, that would make for a pretty dull book :-) However, I just don't care for the way Tempe is presented in this book - she is entirely too excitable overall and that state of mind seemingly has been transferred onto Andy Ryan as well.

However, the irrepressible Pete is as entertaining as ever and the sub-plot about Emma and her battle with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma is just heart-rending. The actual mystery - what happened to the people who had been killed and the mysterious fracture of only their 6th cervical vertebrae - is great also and keeps you guessing almost to the very end. Overall, I can recommend this to fans of the Reichs' series, as well as fans of the genre of forensic thrillers, as that aspect of the book is fabulous.

Although not my favorite book by this author, it was still very good. In general, I really enjoy this author and would highly recommend any of her books.

This entry in the Brennan series is much better than the disasterous Cross Bones. The plot is good and kept me guessing. BUT... as Kirkman correctly pointed out in a previous review coroners do not do autopsies. This isn't a trivial error. Also, one of the bodies in the book has been hung. But the head has falled off. OK - the human head isn't attached to the rest of the body by bone, but only by muscles and ligaments. But the rest of the body is still hanging from the noose. What's keeping it there??? In reality the rest of the body would have fallen when the head fell off. This is a stupid error for Reichs to make.

The entire premise of this book is incorrect. Charleston County has both a coroner and medical examiner system (forensic pathology). The office of the medical examiner would have been involved from the beginning, since the two offices work closely together. To think that an out-of-state anthropologist would be given free rein to evaluate the remains, including having the bones stripped without an autopsy first, is preposterous. She was not a physician, let alone licensed, credentialed and privileged to practice forensic pathology in SC. She may have been invited to consult because of her forensic bone expertise but she would never have been permitted to do what was chronicled.

I trained at MUSC and practiced in Charleston. And I could not believe what I was reading. Ms. Reichs had done her Charleston research well in terms of locations, restaurants and attractions (although two of the plants she listed I had never heard of and I lived there 20 years), but not about the coroner/medical examiner system, which was the crux of the story. I struggled with whether or not to finish the book because I was so incredulous. But I did.

I had read several of her other books and liked them, so I picked this one up at the airport. I thought she had some really great similes and metaphors, but by and large I found her writing self-conscious and superficial. I agree with the reviewers about the lack of character development and the situation with the dueling suitors was a bit far fetched. There was a lot of filler, such as (paraphrased), "I opened my Dell, booted it up, watched the blue screen and got online." I do not know why she had to refer to Boyd as "the chow" over and over. The "twirly eyebrows" got old, too. There were factual errors; veins don't pulse, arteries do. Writing "scrips" instead of "scripts," as an abbreviation for prescriptions. I expected someone in the medical field to know better. I, too, thought the plot was disorganized and strained credulity.

Perhaps I am being too martinetish about the details; probably because I was so off-put by the incorrect framework.

That having been said, I thought she shone when discussing technical aspects and I enjoyed those parts. I also learned that killing people to sell their bodies is called "Burking, "after a Scotsman, William Burke, in the 1820s.

I am giving it a one because of the factual inaccuracy; were it not for that I would have given it a two--it is just not as well written as her others.

This episode has Tempe Brennan in South Carolina filling in as a teacher at an archeology field school. But she and her students find a recent burial among the Native Indian burials. She's asked to stay in Charleston because the coroner there (who's also Tempe's friend) is ill. Soon another body is found hanging in the forest, and then another washes up in a barrel. Of course, Tempe can't keep her nose out of it and gets involved finding out why these people died, who did it and why. And during this week, she's sharing a friend's home with her estranged husband and her boyfriend. Yeah, right...like that would happen...this IS fiction.

This is a good book for a plane ride or rainy day. And, of course, there's plenty of fodder for the next book.

This review is for the audio CD. The narrator uses a breathy, whispered, languid, mostly somnolent delivery style. The reading is choppy and stilted, with inappropriate pace and emotion delivered during dialog and action. This narration is so bad that I am going to buy the paperback and read it, even though I have problems reading.

At times the narrator sounds like she is drugged. Other times she sounds like a voice over for a romance novel. She has no feel for the characters and makes the romantic banter between Tempe and Ryan sound like a child reciting a book report.

THis book made me want to read more fiction. I'm a die hard non fiction reader, with a passionate distaste for most novels. But this page turner made me want to go out and delve into the world of make believe.

A great read for a cross country flight. I read this in one sitting, on a seven hour flight, and was disappointed when we landed. I wanted to re-read the book from page one.

Also recommended: Cat's Cradle.Cat's Cradle

I have always enjoyed being on vacation and reading a novel set in my vacation destination. So it was only natural that I devoured Break No Bones by Kathy Reichs, written about the low country of Charleston, South Carolina.

Temperance Brennan is a forensic anthropologist who sidelights as a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She takes a group of students to Dewees Island for a two week field course. Their goal is to excavate several Indian burial mounds before the area is to be developed. In the course of their digging, they uncover remains that were buried within the last five years. Brennan is friends with the Charleston County coroner, Emma Rousseau, but Rousseau reveals that she's very ill and asks for Brennan's assistance with the autopsy. Brenna finds disturbing marks on the skeleton. Several unrelated remains are later discovered in other locations with the same marks, and Brennan starts looking for the common denominator.

Reichs is knowledgeable about the low country. Charleston is a very charming city, but not without some warts. She knows not only the Holy City, but also, the surrounding areas--which she makes liberal use of in Break No Bones. Reichs also provides an interesting personal triangle. Brennan has started an affair with Canadian Inspector Andrew Ryan in previous books, despite the fact that she is not yet divorced from her handsome but unfaithful husband, Peter. But the circumstances in Break No Bones will make Brennan question her choices.

One of the things I like most about Reichs' writing is her knowledge of forensic anthropology. In Break No Bones, Brennan gives the reason for her career choice. "In my view, death in anonymity is the ultimate insult to human dignity....While I cannot make the dead alive again, I can reunite victims with their names, and give those left behind some measure of closure." Sometimes, she can also find the cause of death. Although those are the words of Temperance Brennan, they're obviously the beliefs of Kathy Reichs.

Now that I've read many of Reichs' later books in this series, it's time to go back and start at the beginning.

I have always enjoyed being on vacation and reading a novel set in my vacation destination. So it was only natural that I devoured Break No Bones by Kathy Reichs, written about the low country of Charleston, South Carolina.

Temperance Brennan is a forensic anthropologist who sidelights as a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She takes a group of students to Dewees Island for a two week field course. Their goal is to excavate several Indian burial mounds before the area is to be developed. In the course of their digging, they uncover remains that were buried within the last five years. Brennan is friends with the Charleston County coroner, Emma Rousseau, but Rousseau reveals that she's very ill and asks for Brennan's assistance with the autopsy. Brenna finds disturbing marks on the skeleton. Several unrelated remains are later discovered in other locations with the same marks, and Brennan starts looking for the common denominator.

Reichs is knowledgeable about the low country. Charleston is a very charming city, but not without some warts. She knows not only the Holy City, but also, the surrounding areas--which she makes liberal use of in Break No Bones. Reichs also provides an interesting personal triangle. Brennan has started an affair with Canadian Inspector Andrew Ryan in previous books, despite the fact that she is not yet divorced from her handsome but unfaithful husband, Peter. But the circumstances in Break No Bones will make Brennan question her choices.

One of the things I like most about Reichs' writing is her knowledge of forensic anthropology. In Break No Bones, Brennan gives the reason for her career choice. "In my view, death in anonymity is the ultimate insult to human dignity....While I cannot make the dead alive again, I can reunite victims with their names, and give those left behind some measure of closure." Sometimes, she can also find the cause of death. Although those are the words of Temperance Brennan, they're obviously the beliefs of Kathy Reichs.

Now that I've read many of Reichs' later books in this series, it's time to go back and start at the beginning.