Cut to The Bone: A Body Farm Novel

The serviceable eighth Body Farm novel (after 2012's The Bones of Avignon) from the writing team of Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson is a prequel. Forensic anthropologist Bass created the world's first facility to study the decomposition of human corpses, and his fictional alter ego, Dr. William Brockton, is about to do the same in 1992 in Tennessee. Brockton, who's been frustrated by his inability to help law-enforcement pinpoint the time of death, believes that analysis of exactly how long it takes cadavers to disintegrate by using "bugs like a time-since-death stopwatch" can do just that. Meanwhile, a sadist named Satterfield is severing the limbs of his female victims, an m.o. that matches that of a murderer Brockton pursued two years earlier in Alaska. The writing sometimes gets away from the authors ("the razor-tipped arrow penetrated his chest, and his heart opened in a bloom of crimson to receive its thrust"), and plot surprises are the exception rather than the rule, but series fans will be pleased. Agent: Giles Anderson, Anderson Literary Agency. (Oct.)