The first three Body Farm novelsβCarved in Bone, Flesh and Bone, and The Devil's Bonesβtook readers deep into the backwoods of East Tennessee, where fascinating forensic science mixed with extraordinary characters, including the Farm's charismatic founder. Now, in the latest installment of the New York Times bestselling series Kathy Reichs calls "the real deal," truth, lies, war, and history intertwine in a story that reaches new heights of suspense. This is Jefferson Bass's most ambitious and enthralling book yet.
Bones of Betrayal
Dr. Bill Brockton is in the middle of a nuclear-terrorism disaster drill when he receives an urgent call from the nearby town of Oak Ridgeβbetter known as Atomic City, home of the Bomb, and the key site for the Manhattan Project during World War II. Although more than sixty years have passed, could repercussions from that dangerous time still be felt today?
With his graduate assistant Miranda Lovelady, Brockton hastens to the death scene, where they find a body frozen facedown in a swimming pool behind a historic, crumbling hotel. The forensic detectives identify the victim as Dr. Leonard Novak, a renowned physicist and designer of a plutonium reactor integral to the Manhattan Project. They also discover that he didn't drown: he died from a searing dose of radioactivity.
As that same peril threatens the medical examiner and even Miranda, Brockton enlists the help of a beautiful, enigmatic librarian to peel back the layers of Novak's life to the secret at its core. The physicist's house and personal life yield few clues beyond a faded roll of undeveloped film, but everything changes when Brockton chances upon Novak's ninety-year-old ex-wife, Beatrice. Charming and utterly unreliable, she takes him on a trip back into Oak Ridge's wartime past, deep into the shadows of the nuclear race where things were not quite as they seemed.
As Beatrice drifts between lucidity and dementia, Brockton wonders if her stories are fact or fancy, history or myth. But he knows one thingβthat she holds the key to a mystery that is becoming increasingly labyrinthine. For as the radiation count steadily rises, and the race to find the truth intensifies, the old woman's tales hint at something far darker and more complex than the forensic anthropologist himself could have ever imagined.
From Publishers Weekly
In bestseller Bass's average fourth forensic thriller to feature Dr. Bill Brockton (after?Β The Devil's Bones), a frozen corpse found in a lake near the Oak Ridge, Tenn., nuclear research facility turns out to be that of Dr. Leonard Novak, one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project, the secret government program to build the first atomic bomb during WWII. When the source of death, potent radioactive material the old man somehow ingested, poisons the local medical examiner, Brockton's inquiry takes on added urgency. After meeting Novak's ex-wife at his funeral, Brockton wonders if there might be a link between the present-day murder and long-forgotten events; with the aid of an attractive local librarian, he starts to dig into Oak Ridge's past. Given the small pool of suspects, many readers will guess the killer's identity before it's revealed. Those looking for a more evocative portrait of the paranoid atmosphere surrounding the Manhattan Project should seek out Joseph Kanon's Los Alamos. (Feb.)
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From Booklist
The latest Body Farm novel finds forensic anthropologist Bill Brockton looking into an unusual death. A manβs body is pulled out of a swimming pool in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The autopsy reveals that he appears to have died after ingesting a highly radioactive pellet. When Brockton discovers that the victim was a key player in the Manhattan Projectβthat, in fact, he designed a reactor that was instrumental in the creation of the first atomic bomb more than 60 years agoβhe realizes that to solve the crime, he must penetrate the secrets-laden history of the Manhattan Project itself. This series, written by forensic anthropologist Bass (the creator of the real Body Farm in Tennessee) and Jefferson, just keeps getting better. The latest installment features both the most compelling story and the best portrayal yet of Brockton, who has completed the transition from fictional representation of coauthor Bass to fully realized protagonist. Expect bigger and better things from this point on. --David Pitt