Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man.

And if you can’t wait for Deaver’s next, James delivers the goods.Īnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Ī week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Because Scarab Productions makes special-interest films for a limited market, they approach the prospect of killing the Bryces as a business opportunity.ĭespite echoes of Thomas Harris, the closer analogue is to Jeffery Deaver’s clock-racing thrillers. Supported by the surprising compassion of his alcoholic, spendthrift wife, Kellie, Tom inevitably phones the authorities and then watches his life turn from a battle against recalcitrant clients and overdue bills to a battle of life and death.

He’s under intense pressure to solve a case with no clues the gruesome crime details he’s trying to keep secret in order to screen out crank callers are promptly splashed across the front page of the local tabloid and his tentative advances to pathology technician Cleo Morey are thwarted by his grieving for his wife, Sandy, who disappeared without a trace nine years ago.

While Tom is agonizing over what to do, Grace is having his own troubles. In short order, Tom gets an email with a dire warning from Scarab Productions: If he tries to open the program or contact the producers or the police, he’ll be killed along with his wife and children. He takes it home, idly boots it up and discovers in the few moments before it stops playing and begins to erase his hard drive that it’s a record of the brutal murder of Janie Stretton, the law student whose mangled body has launched the Sussex CID on a frenzied investigation. Leaving the commuter train at Brighton, struggling entrepreneur Tom Bryce finds an unlabeled CD where a particularly obnoxious fellow-traveler had been sitting. Roy Grace’s sophomore case is just as suspenseful as his first ( Dead Simple, 2006), and just as wildly improbable.

Roy grace looking good dead