Book #5 for 2011

Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I downloaded this on my Kindle at the recommendation of a blog friend.  It's a new author for me,or team of authors as it's a duo who write under the pseudonym of Jefferson Bass. One author is Dr. Bill Bass who founded the Anthropology Research Facility aka the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee.  His writing partner is Jon Jefferson, who is a journalist and documentary filmmaker.  While I am not a fan of detailed gore, I do enjoy the detective work that forensic pathologists and medical examiners do.  The fictional Dr. Bill Brockton is a forensic anthropologist and professor at the University of Tennessee, home of the famous (infamous?) Body Farm. He is called in to investigate an unusual find - the perfectly preserved body of an unknown female deep inside a cave in the Tennessee hills.  He is thrust into the middle of corrupt county law enforcement and longtime family feuds.  Is Jim O'Connor as aboveboard as he seems or is he the seat of the corruption?  And what about Tom Kitchings, the Cooke County sheriff and former star UT quarterback?  I enjoyed the plot and I didn't expect the twist at the end of the book.  The actual description of the forensic work was pretty detailed; I did skim a few sections, in the way I cover my eyes when surgeons start to operate on TV, or something particularly grisly shows up on the screen.  I will look for the next book in the series.


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As an aside:  I've been to the University of Tennessee 3 times, most recently in 2005.  All 3 times I was chaperoning groups of children.  One trip was for the UCC National Youth Event, and the other two were finals for a problem solving competition.   I was completely unaware of the existence of the the Body Farm.  As I read this novel, however, I recognized the stadium  and remember someone telling me that there were classrooms under it.