Rating: 
Summary: Not Satisfying
Review: "Grave Secrets" by Kathy Reichs. CD Audio Version read by Katherine Borowitz.Kathy Reichs is well know for writing novels that employ her in-depth knowledge of forensic analysis to surprise, sometimes shock and often stimulate the reader. The latest book, "Grave Secrets", however is like a large kitchen with too many cooks and too much to eat. You snack something here and snicker something there and soon, you have lost the edge of your hunger, but you are NOT satisfied. "Grave Secrets" begins with the assignment of Tempe Brennan to a burial site in a small village in Guatemala where government death squads have killed all the women and children, Brennan's assignment is to document the deaths, the mode(s) of killing and the calendar time of death. Some of her co-workers are killed in an ambush, and this later appears to be an assassination attempt on Tempe Brennan. In the middle of this, because of her experience and her writing of papers on the subject, Brennan is asked to assist in the exhumation and identification of human remains in a septic system. Then, the over-sexed Canadian ambassador to Guatemala appears to be involved and his daughter is missing. Tempe flies back to Montreal with the Ambassador's wife, where the missing daughter has been found, but, in my opinion, this visit to Montreal really does not advance the plot. The trip does permit Tempe to meet with Andrew Ryan, a romantic interest. The next plot line involves stem cell research, and there is a substantial tutorial on embryonic stem cell research and the potential for help to victims of diseases such as Parkinson's. At least twice, the author has her characters describe President George W. Bush's decision on limiting stem cell "lines' as wrong. Finally, in the next to last chapter after an unbecoming description of an attack of diaherra (where later proves to be caused by drugs slipped into a soda can), Tempe Brennan resolves all the plot lines. The last chapter is tinged with romance as Tempe tries to decide between Andrew Ryan and a Spanish version, nicknamed "The Bat", who had gone to college with Andrew Ryan. There was just too much going on, too quick a resolution of the twisted plot lines and then, the novel changed from a mystery "who dun it" into a romance. The overall book did not satisfy me. The reader, Katherine Borowitz, was excellent and handled both the French names in Montreal and the Spanish names in Guatemala City with appropriate accents. I enjoyed listening to her as I commuted on 495, the ring road around Boston.
Rating: 
Summary: Why The Grass Grows Greener
Review: --over the septic tank. Kathy Reichs' "Grave Secrets" tells you more than you ever wanted to know about sloshing around in said septic tank. Tempe Brennan multi-tasks in Guatemala. She is there on a mercy mission to identify 20-year old corpses massacred during government upheavals. Then she is called in by a local homicide detective to assist him in removing suspected remains from a septic tank. Oh my! It is just as bad as you think, but if you can get through that, your stomach and spine should be strong enough for the rest of the story. I enjoyed the exotic setting. Reichs has a good feel for Guatemala, its government and the populace. Tempe is well presented in this outing, brisk, humorous and delightfully vulnerable to a handsome man crossing her path. That said handsome man is almost a clone of the one she has stashed in Canada just shows she is a consistent lady. "Grave Secrets" is seriously over-plotted, but the author does get some good mileage with all her red herrings and distractions. She makes an interesting point of how differently a crime is treated when a major diplomat's daughter is involved as opposed to an ordinary citizen. A warning: when Ms. Reich's says, "Do you want the short version?" Brace yourself for at least three pages of very technical material on such things as stem cells, septic tanks and DNA. I think Kathy Reichs is a steadily improving author. She is head and shoulders ahead of rival Patricia Cornwell because Reichs has the advantage of forensic anthropology credentials and the liveliness of spirit to make her heroine a multi-faceted human rather than a drama queen with angst such as Kay Scarpetta. All you need to enjoy "Grave Secrets" is a strong constitution.
-sweetmolly-Amazon.com Reviewer
Rating:
Summary: a bit disappointing
Review: Admittedly i am a fan of very long books, but i found this one to be a bit thin (physically and metaphorically). It is still a good mystery, but a few things about it bothered me: (i) the characters were pretty sketchy, except for the regular characters to whom we bring the history of the prior books; (ii)there is not real DEVELOPMENT of the existing characters; the events that occur don't seem to change them at all; (iii) the various plot elements are tied up in a big bow in a rabbit-out-of-a-hat kind of way, and the pace at the end of the book is too swift compared to the rest of it. Almost an Hercule Poirot abruptness to the ending. It was, nevertheless a "good read" and unlikely to be more than a little disappointing to fans.
Rating:
Summary: GRAVE SECRETS
Review: ALTHUGH I ENJOYED THIS BOOK I DON'T THINK IT WAS THE BEST THE AUTHOR HAS WROTE. FOR ME THE STORY JUMPED AROUND TOO MUCH AND WAS VERY CONFUSING.
Rating:
Summary: WARNING
Review: audible.com audiobooks may or may not work. may or may not take longer than reading the book. tech dept keeps banking hours and has one phone line.
Rating:
Summary: Cornwell fans defect to Kathy Reichs!
Review: Believe the jacket blurb from the San Francisco Chronicle: "Reminiscent of Patricia Cornwell at the top of her game." Detailed without being cold and well plotted without being predictable, GRAVE SECRETS is not just a compelling beach read, it's an educational one. Kathy Reichs invokes setting and lays out forensic detail with equal amounts of poetic skill. Heroine Temperance Brennan is conflicted without being self absorbed and driven without being fanatical. I devoured the earlier works of Patricia Cornwell for precisely these reasons. But I've been greatly dissapointed as Kay Scarpetta ventured off into a realm of woman-against-the-world fantasy divorced from brutal murders and forensic detail. The Temperance Brennan series has so far avoided monotony. Each new novel strongly focuses on a fresh mystery in a unique locale, making it both a welcome addition as well as a strong stand-alone thriller inviting to new readers. While the flirty yet stand-offish relationship between Temperance and handsome police detective Ryan is threatening to grow stale, a somewhat cliffhanger ending leaves some hope that Reichs will begin fleshing out her heroine's personal life with the same skill and narrative authority she uses to construct riveting and elegantly executed forensic mysteries.
Rating: 
Summary: superb yet frightening crime thriller
Review: Between the years of 1962-1996, Guatemala was involved in a bloody civil war and many of the peasants who were thought to be rebels were killed or disappeared. In the present, the government is now sending in forensic teams to find and identify the victims so they can be given a proper burial. Dr. Temperance Brennan, a famous forensic anthropologist, is one of the members who are trying to sort out the body parts on the site of a massacre. While doing her work, she is asked by an honest policeman to examine the body of a woman who was found in a septic tank. It seems that in the past few months, four young women have gone missing and the authorities fear they have a serial killer on their hands. While working the case, Temperance finds herself in danger from an unexpected source and only a miracle will save her life. Kathy Reichs is a fantastic writer of crime thrillers and her latest work GRAVE SECRETS is even better than usual because of its locations. Based on facts and true events, readers get an inside look at a Central American country where genocide on the local people occurred for more than three decades. Temperance is the kind of heroine most women aspires to be. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Not Cornwell, thank Heavens
Review: Comparing Kathy Reichs to Cornwell is like comparing real roses to plastic ones; it doesn't do Reichs any favors with those of us who find Cornwell's books tedious, cartoonish, and stupid. No question, Reichs is getting better. Complaints about "intricate plotting" hint at that. Here, she weaves together four disappearances that appear to be related, and an apparently unrelated murder, then resolves all the strands quickly with only one convenient accident. And the last four sentences of the book made me laugh out loud. Some fun. Reichs' forensics are rock solid and fascinating. More to the point, her characters are not cardboard grotesques, and her heroine's values extend beyond the brandname of her stemware. There is none of Cornwell's thinly veiled contempt for people who don't covet Jaguars. The appearance of Tempe Brennan in a Guatemalan village was a bit of a shock, but within a few pages, it makes sense and, for its humanizing and realistic focus on one person trying to make a difference in a real political tragedy, it is a major attraction of the book. Brennan isn't out to save the world from face-peeling supervillains; she's slogging in a septic tank to protect real people from real evil. Can't wait for more.
Rating:
Summary: Not her best effort!
Review: Dr. Tempe Brennan helps identify remains of villagers in Guatemala that "have been disappeared" in the early 1980's. Friends of hers get shot on the very first pages and she is called to consult on the deaths of recently missing young women. The massacre and the deaths of the young woman seem to lead to a serial killer and even the Canadian ambassador to Gustemala seems to be involved. Brass first makes Tempe consult, then obstructs investigations (bodies get confiscated or are being cremated after a very short period of time). As usual forensics is gruesomely, nail-bitingly wrapped up but I couldn't have cared less about the lenghty explanations regarding the Guatemaltecan judiciary system. As Ryan put it: "Give me the five minutes version", which she unfortunately did not. Relations and connections between several people in this book seem a bit far-fetched to me, political enmeshment a tad too piled on for the sake of the story (okay, okay...one wouldn't have been possible without the other).The Guatemaltecan cop investigating the deaths of the young women happens to be a college buddy of Andrew Ryan, now isn't that a convenient thread to get Ryan involved in the story (apart from having amorous interests in him)? Naturally she encounters dangerous situations in this book, but I still wonder how that Diet Coke could have been tampered with (and while we are at it: where did she get Victoria's Secret lingerie from all of a sudden? Does she wear that when excavating victims of a massacre? Or does G-City happen to have a Victoria's Secret Store???). She even seems to keep her short temper under control, more or less. Why is that? Different climate? Due to being sick? Go ahead and read this book, if you have read the previous novels, but don't start with this book as the first one in the series, because you won't read the others then. I hope that Keithy Reichs brings back the real Dr. Temperance Brennan in her next book and that she won't digress into lengthy unnerving explanations on political systems again. This book is definitely not a competition for one of the Dr. Kay Scarpetta books by Patrcia Cornwell Daniels.
Rating:
Summary: Dead and Buried
Review: Grave Secrets , the fifth Temperance Brennan novel, is another excellent addition to the series which has blasted Kathy Reichs to fame. This time, Tempe is sent to Guatemala to recover the bodies of the dead (known as "the Disappeareds") massacred during that country's vile civil war. It is in the village of Chupan Ya that she uncovers 28 dead bodies, and on the way to the site, two other forensic scientists are attacked on the road, shot, and left for dead. It is the beginning of an investigation which will haunt Tempe in the coming weeks. Shortly after, her help is sought by the local police. Four teenage girls have gone missing in Guatemala City, and one of them is the daughter of the Canadian Ambassador. Is there a serial killer at work? Soon after, a decomposing body is found in a septic tank of a local hotel, and the investigating begins in earnest. Reichs' writing is sharp; the plotting tight and complex. Her characters are interesting, often drawn with only a few choice words, and her descriptions of the dead are brilliant. Reichs' books ring with authenticity, as she has been and done the same sorts of things as her main character. This fuels the writing with realism and a relentless compassion for the dead, which really comes out in the story. She never lets you forget that these people walked, breathed, laughed, talked...that they used to be us. Her use of forensic detail is interesting, and the way she writes about science doesn't make you feel as if you're reading a textbook. (In this area, she is almost on a par with Cornwell.) However, with this book there is one too many plot lines, leading them to become confused in the mind of the reader. However, careful reading does tend to remedy this. Guatemala is described well, the horrors of the war still brood over the landscape. Tempe's relationship with Ryan develops and complicates with this book when she also finds herself attracted to a Guatemalan police officer, who once knew Ryan. Tempe's conflict is done well and serves to bolster the roundness of her character. Being a devout Cornwell fan (I even liked Isle of Dogs ) it is hard for me to say, but Tempe is a more realistic, well drawn, and likeable character than Kay Scarpetta. The... conclusion... is chilling, and brings the book to a satisfying close. While Grave Secrets is not quite as good as last year's offering (Fatal Voyage), it is still first class.
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