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I love reading forensic novels and Flesh and Bone by Jefferson Bass is a great one.

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MY REVIEW

The body farm is easy to imagine because I watch Bones, the TV show.

I love Jessamine Carter, the ME for Chattanooga, currently filling in for Knoxville as well. She drives a red Carrera, that fits her personality and allows her to cut travel time off her commute.

“Do men really believe that’s what six inches looks like? Try three and a half.”

Humor and death do go hand  in hand, don’t they?

Dr. Brockton, is a forensic anthropologist and professor at the University of Tennessee and stages bodies at the body farm for research. I found myself chuckling at the writing even though the scenes were gruesome.

Jess and the doc are an item. She takes charge of that too. The banter between them is is humorous, snarky and fun, the teasing laced with sexual innuendo. They are complex characters and Jefferson Bass does a great job of bringing them to life. I must warn you though, he isn’t afraid to kill off his characters, so be careful who you become attached to.

Oops…didn’t see that coming. Now the real investigation begins. The details of deciphering clues, step by step, are stories I love to read about.

The writing is not as heavy and dark as some of the thrillers I have read, but it does raise a serious question for me. Why do we feel that by refusing to talk to the police, without a lawyer present, automatically makes us guilty. Just because you’re innocent, doesn’t mean the justice system will find that. Sometimes, instead of using clues to find the answer, they assume the answer and look for clues to make the pieces fit. I watch enough True Crime, and the crime TV shows to know this. That makes it easy for me to relate to what is coming down and it truly pisses me off.

Tragedy, love, sacrifice, revenge, anger and rage. Complex and fully developed characters allow me to sympathize and empathize with them, hoping they will find the answers they are looking for.

I didn’t see the ending happening the way it did, but I loved the dramatic flourish. Full of all the details for a great murder mystery with some thrills and suspense thrown in, along with characters to die for.

Talk about being close to your work, be sure and check out the bio of this fantastic writing duo.

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Flesh and Bone by Jefferson Bass.

5 Stars

GOODREADS BLURB

Anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton founded Tennessee’s world-famous Body Farm—a small piece of land where corpses are left to decay in order to gain important forensic information. Now, in the wake of a shocking crime in nearby Chattanooga, he’s called upon by Jess Carter — the rising star of the state’s medical examiners — to help her unravel a murderous puzzle. But after re-creating the death scene at the Body Farm, Brockton discovers his career, reputation, and life are in dire jeopardy when a second, unexplained corpse appears in the grisly setting.

Accused of a horrific crime — transformed overnight from a respected professor to a hated and feared pariah — Bill Brockton will need every ounce of his formidable forensic skills to escape the ingeniously woven net that’s tightening around him… and to prove the seemingly impossible: his own innocence.

ABOUT JEFFERSON BASS

Jefferson Bass is the pen name of Jon Jefferson, writer, and Dr. Bill Bass, renowned forensic anthropologist. Jefferson and Bass have collaborated on 2 nonfiction books and 6 crime novels; their 7th novel, The Inquisitor’s Key, will be published in May 2012. Dr. Bass, founder of the University of Tennessee’s “Body Farm,” is an author on more than 200 scientific publications. Jefferson is a veteran journalist and documentary filmmaker; his two National Geographic documentaries on the Body Farm were seen around the world.

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