The Devil’s Bones by Jefferson Bass is the third novel in the Dr. Bill Brockton forensics series. Jefferson Bass is the pseudonym of a writing duo, Dr. Bill Bass, a forensics specialist who founded Tennessee’s Body Farm, and Jon Jefferson, the journalist who co-wrote Dr. Bass’s nonfiction books.
I enjoy the CSI world a lot, and I can differentiate between Hollywood DNA results (done while you wait) and real-world DNA results (six months waiting list), but I’m still a sucker for a well-told tale with plenty of hard science behind it. In that frame, The Devil’s Bones has a lot of both going for it.
I enjoyed Dr. Brockton’s first-person “aw shucks,” down-to-earth storytelling. I grew up in small towns where PHDs still wear cowboy boots and haven’t quite shaken the rural accents. I always looked up to those men and women (yes, there are women there who haven’t gotten out of cowboy boots either) because they knew so much but hadn’t gotten away from the lives they’d grown up in. To me, his character felt very natural and real.
However, I was aware that this was a third novel in a series because I was reminded over and over again that I wasn’t privy to the events in the preceding novels. To my way of thinking there were simply too many ties to the last couple of novels to make this one easily picked up and absorbed by a new reader. I’m going to go back and read the other two books in order, because I was well entertained, but I really regretted not having read them before I read this one. So that’s a caveat for new readers who might be interested in this. I think the series is well worth the investment, though.
There’s a lot going on in this novel. In the beginning, Dr. Brockton tries to help a colleague out on a murder investigation that includes burning various body parts in an automobile fire at night. Readers are treated to a lot of scientific data right off the bat, but in a way that’s immediately absorbable and makes a lot of sense. I particularly enjoyed this case because it ran throughout most of the book.
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