Sofa Spotlight - 206 Bones, Kathy Reichs

Writing this it has dawned on me that I read a lot of crime fiction. Probably that was already obvious to you. I was going to say that this one was less creepy than last week’s 13 Minutes but I think it is equally creepy just in a different way.

This time the creepiness comes in a more passive aggressive, stalkerish kind of way. The novel opens with Dr Temperance Brennen finding herself imprisoned in a dark, very enclosed space. And no memory of how she got there. The rest of the book switches between the present with Brennen trying to work out how to escape and her memories of what has happened before she got into her present predicament.

Those flashbacks are about a case involving the murders of two elderly women that are potentially linked to another murder Brennen had been working on. The team she has been working with had their own troubles, the head of department is off sick, and there’s a newbie who seems to cause trouble. And someone has made an anonymous phone call questioning her competency. There are plenty of suspects for the attack on Brennen, including her neighbour who isn’t overly keen on her cat.

For me this is the second time I’ve read this book and it will be one that I keep because of what it started. It was given to me by someone who had read it and it was planning to give it to a charity shop. I read it, liked it and passed it to a friend. Who got addicted to the series and started reading more. We then discovered the TV series and that has brought a lot of laughs and happiness into our lives. All because someone decided to give me a book rather than take it to a charity shop. Moral of the story – offer your friends your books first, you don’t know what you might start. (Just in case you're worried for the charity shops - I then spent quite some time scouring them to find the whole series so I feel like I made up for their initial loss.)

If you’re unfamiliar with the Bones series and you like crime drama then you are missing out. This book is the twelfth in the series, but I read it as a standalone and it was great. If you are coming to book series from the TV show there are differences that you will pick up straight away. The characters are not the same, there’s no Booth, and in this one, I’m not sure about the others, there’s a fair bit of dialogue in French. Not having a great knowledge of French I just skipped over those bits and I don’t feel like I lost anything for it. I had the same issue with War and Peace. Maybe I should work on improving my French this year. Some of the description can also get quite technical, which having watched the show I feel like I handled better this time round.

All in all it’s a good read. One of those where you need to keep reading to find out what happens and it doesn’t matter if you don’t eat or sleep for a few days while you do that.