government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man.

Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books.

Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. On the other hand, the very last surprise, climaxing a turf war between the BCA and the Department of Homeland Security, is a honey.Īnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Ī week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. The suspects include Ralph Warren, Wigge’s sinister boss at that security firm Professor Mead Sinclair, a lefty researcher on the Vietnam War who just might be in bed with the CIA his half-Vietnamese daughter Mai, who makes her extracurricular interest in Virgil plain from the get-go.Īlthough the prose sounds like Sandford, the plotting is a letdown: The trail to the last act is rich in incident, but not original, urgent or compelling.

Prompted by Lucas and driven night after sleepless night to assemble the facts, Virgil ( Dark of the Moon, 2007, etc.) learns at length that all the targets on the kill list served together in Vietnam, where they shared a secret worth killing for nearly 40 years later. The two murders are clearly the work of the same killer, but who is he, and why has he taken such ritualistic care to incriminate himself by emphasizing the similarities between two crimes that ordinarily wouldn’t have been connected? More to the point, are these two crimes only the beginning? For readers new to this sort of fiction, Sandford helpfully provides brief conversations indicating that Chippewa Indian Ray Bunton and ex-cop John Wigge, a VP at a private security agency, had better watch their backs as well. 22 and found with a section of lemon in his mouth-all details that echo the recent death of title searcher Chuck Utecht in New Ulm. The Stillwater police call Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) to the veterans’ memorial where the body of building inspector Bobby Sanderson has been deposited. Sandford, who seems determined to keep Lucas Davenport’s latest cases secret, allows him to be upstaged once more by his junior colleague Virgil Flowers, though this time there’s no great honor in star billing.

Heat lightning