I’d taken a year off and I had some medical issues – so I gave
those to Temperance – she’s been diagnosed with a cerebral
aneurysm and had surgery to correct it. She also has career
problems – she has history with her new boss and they don’t
get along at all. So she’s been barred. So she’s got this health
issue and she’s working from outside the system.’
Temperance’s discovery of a body sends her off grid on her
own investigation, A layered, intelligent, involving read, A
Conspiracy of Bones touches on some disturbing contemporary
issues. ‘She discovers this faceless corpse – no hands or face
or teeth,’ says Kathy. ‘So Temperance wants to get this person
identified but she has to work outside the system. I thought- one of the themes is what’s real and what is not real, given
today’s atmosphere of fake news. I wanted her to rely on her
own abilities and perceptions yet not fully trust them. I felt
that she must rely on herself but not completely trust her own
instincts as she had in the past.’
In part, Temperance’s shift in approach came about because
Kathy was conscious that a long-running series needs to ring
the changes to keep readers interested. ‘It is book nineteen and
you can’t do the same old same old,’ she says. ‘The advantage
of writing a series character is that people know her and they’re
going to like her. The disadvantage is that A Conspiracy of Bones
may be the first Temperance Brennan book that someone reads,
so you’ve got to reintroduce them – but in such a way that the
reader who’s on their nineteenth book in the series doesn’t get
bored. You have to do it in a different way with each book, so
you don’t bore the returning reader. So that’s a challenge. And
you want her to be evolving throughout the series or readers
will lose interest.’
But for this book, Kathy also wanted to explore the
ramifications, in this investigation, of the recent proliferation of
widely transmitted information that appears to be true but has
no basis in fact. ‘It is very timely. Hopefully. We’re living in a
world where we’re constantly seeking to unravel what is real and
not real. In today’s world it’s not like with newspapers, where
everything is double-checked. Anyone can go on the internet
and say anything they want.’
With each book, Kathy sets Temperance’s investigation
within a real-life issue. ‘I try to set each book against the
backdrop of this world we live in,’ she says. ‘In A Conspiracy
of Bones it’s information that’s not true, and we’re constantly
forced to filter through. I do like to have a broader theme.
I’ve had human trafficking, trafficking in endangered species,
human rights issues. There should be a broader message within.
My first book was just a murder mystery story. But as I evolved
as a writer I wanted to bring in these wider issues.’
Kathy’s crime novels go hand in hand with a career in
forensic anthropology at the highest level: she was deployed
to Ground Zero after 9/11, testified at the UN tribunal on
genocide on Rwanda and was part of the team that exhumed
one of the mass graves in Guatemala, which informed the plot
of her 2002 novel Grave Secrets. Her first novel, 1998’s Deja
Dead, was based on her first serial murder investigation.
‘I was working at the university and had been for many
years and made full professor. So I was free to do whatever
I wanted and I thought it was a way of bringing science to
a broader audience. And I also thought it would be fun to
write a novel rather than another textbook. And that’s what I
decided. I sat down at my laptop and started writing. I didn’t
have any formal training – I just started writing the kind of
book I like to read. I like procedural fiction and the darkerhttp://www.writers-online.co.ukBONING UP
STAR INTERVIEW
“The challenge is to present
the science in a way that’s
understandable: brisk and
jargon-free. And I have to be
entertaining. So these three
elements have to come together.
Keep the facts correct but
keep it brisk, jargon-free
and entertaining.”
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Bones of
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