Real-life forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs has written eleven mystery novels to date (out of a contractual fourteen) which have been translated into 30 languages, beginning with Déjà Dead in 1997.
Her protagonist, Temperance "Tempe" Brennan, is also a forensic anthropologist whose lifestyle closely mimics that of her creator. “I based her on myself because it just seemed easier to model her on somebody I knew, though I gave her some flaws, like the alcoholism, that are strictly her own,” Reichs told Publishers Weekly in a recent interview.
The latest in the series is the recently released Devil Bones.
Tempe is back home in Charlotte, N.C. and her attempts to identify two corpses unearthed during a housing renovation and an unidentified headless torso found in a nearby lake pits her against citizen vigilantes intent on a witch-hunt. There are disturbing clues possibly pointing to voodoo or Santeria and a local fundamentalist preacher turned politician, intent on using the deaths as the cornerstone of his crusade against immorality, claims that the bodies bear the mark of devil worshippers.
The television series Bones is inspired by Reichs' life and writing. All of the stories are original to the show but she reads every script and works with the writers to guarantee the scientific accuracy of the show. The series heroine is also Temperance Brennan, but her nickname is "Bones" rather than Tempe. As in the books, she is a forensic anthropologist and, in an interesting twist, she moonlights as an author who writes mystery novels about a fictional forensic anthropologist named Kathy Reichs.
To find more forensic mysteries you can simply search the library catalog under the subject heading Forensic mysteries.
Reichs is also involved in a team that is seeking approval to disinter famed magician Harry Houdini from the Glendale (Queens, N.Y.) cemetery where he was buried in the hopes of dispelling once and for all the conspiracy theories surrounding his death.
There are a number of mystery novels which feature Harry Houdini.
Daniel Stashower’s The Dime Museum Murders takes us back to 1897, when Houdini is struggling to make it in the brutal entertainment business. Detectives call on him to attempt the most amazing feat of his fledgling career: solve the mystery of a toy tycoon murdered in his posh Fifth Avenue mansion.
Flash forward to the 1920s, when Walter Satterthwait's Escapade mixes spiritualism with a locked-room murder mystery in a tale featuring Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
In William Hjortsberg’s Nevermore Houdini also joins forces with Arthur Conan Doyle, in this case to solve a series of murders which eerily re-enact the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.
Houdini, Doyle and Poe. Who could ask for anything more?
