Grave Secrets

It was a summer morning in 1982 when soldiers ravaged the village of Chupan Ya, raping and killing women and children. Twenty-three victims are said to lie in the well when Dr. Temperance Brennan and the team from the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation now dig. No records were kept. To their families, the dead are "the disappeared."

The team is packing up for the day when an urgent satellite call comes in. Two colleagues are under attack. Shots ring out, and Tempe listens in horror to a woman's sreams. Then there is silence. Dead silence.

With this new violence, Tempe is asked by the Guatemalan police for her expertise on another case. Four privlidged young women have vanished from Guatemala City in recent months. One is the Canadian's ambassador's daughter. Some remains have turned up in the septic tank. Unfortunately, Tempe knows septic tanks.

Teaming with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolome Galiano, and with Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe soon finds herself in a dangerous web that streches far beyond Guatemala's borders. As power, money, greed, and science converge, Tempe must make life-altering choices.

Grave Secrets is powerful entertainment from a crime fiction superstar who combines riveting authenticity with witty, elegant prose.

Kathy Reich is forensic anthropologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, and for the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Medecine Legale for the province of Quebeck. She is one of only fifty forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. She now divides her time between Charlotte and Montreal and is a frequent expert witness at criminal trials. Her first novel, Deja Dead, brought Dr. Reichs fame when it became New York Times bestseller and won the 1997 Ellis Award for Best First Novel. Grave Secrets is her fifth novel featuring Temperance Brennan. Her Web site is www.kathyreichs.com.