Another Sleuthing Medical Examiner Builds a Body of Work

According to the dust jacket of Kathy Reichs’ new novel, “Deadly Decisions” (Scribner’s, $25, 333 pages), her credentials as a forensic anthropologist are impressive. She works for North Carolina’s office of the chief medical examiner and in a similar role for the province of Quebec. She’s also on the board of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. One can only imagine what went through her publisher’s mind when the manuscript for her first mystery, “Deja Dead,” arrived. Scribner’s had launched and lost (to Putnam’s) Patricia Cornwell’s series about medical examiner Kay Scarpetta. Cornwell had been a technical writer and computer analyst in the Virginia Medical Examiner’s Office. Here was a manuscript by a budding novelist whose vitae said she’d actually walked the forensic walk.

Thanks to full-press publicity from Scribner’s, Reichs’ maiden effort was rewarded with both critical and reader acclaim. But, to these jaded eyes at least, her weary, depressed and bureaucracy-battered heroine, Dr. Temperance Brennan, was merely a clone of Scarpetta, while the book’s serial rapist-murderer plot offered nothing new or unusual except for its Canadian setting and an almost obscene succession of detailed autopsies, some of which had no direct bearing on the plot.

I’m afraid I’ve even less fondness for her latest, though it’s hard to dislike a novel that begins with the (albeit unintended) darkly humorous statement, “I’d been at the lab for four hours, sorting badly mangled tissue. . . . “ When Tempe (a nickname that takes some getting used to) visits Quantico, I kept hoping she’d bump into Kay and exchange serial-killer yarns over brunch. When her troubled and troublesome nephew, Kit, arrives in Montreal, I began wondering if he and Kay’s niece couldn’t find some solace in their similar rails against authority figures.

The main plot of the novel concerns a war between rival biker gangs in Montreal. There’s even a rumble at a biker funeral.

Lots of autopsy material there, of course, but, even with head Hell’s Angel Sonny Barger’s new autobiography recalling the glory years of bikerdom, some may find the concept a little, well, deja dead. Reichs should probably stick with Cornwell and leave Roger Corman for the cineastes.

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Kathy Reichs has provided the preface, and Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi the foreword to “Hidden Evidence” (Firefly Books, $24.95, 240 pages), a look at 40 true crime cases that forensic science helped close. “Look” is the key word here; journalist (and television producer) David Owen, who collected the information, illustrates his straightforward descriptions of the crimes and the science with pages and pages of photos and art. Included are John Kennedy’s autopsy descriptive sheet, stages of facial reconstruction, candids of a stabbing in Turkey (snapped by a passing journalist), a murderer’s identification scrawled in the victim’s blood and other grim but fascinating exhibits.

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The Times reviews mysteries every other week. Next week: Rochelle O’ Gorman on audio books.