Without Mercy: A Body Farm Novel

In bestseller Bass’s subpar 10th Body Farm novel (after 2015’s The Breaking Point), forensic anthropologist Bill Brockton, founder of the Body Farm for postmortem research, investigates some skeletal remains found in the woods in Tennessee’s Cooke County. The absence of a skull makes identification especially difficult, and evidence that the bones belong to a murder victim who was deliberately made into bear bait makes the need to identify the corpse urgent. Meanwhile, Brockton’s bête noire, serial killer Nick Satterfield, who almost took the lives of the scientist and his family decades earlier, escapes from prison in a way that Thomas Harris fans will find familiar. Satterfield’s appearance shifts the book’s emphasis from interesting scientific detective work to a paint-by-the-numbers cat and mouse game with a sadistic madman. The action builds to a denouement that’s predictably implausible. Bass is the pseudonym for the writing team of Bill Bass, founder of the real-life Body Farm, and Jon Jefferson. [em]Agent: Giles Anderson, Anderson Literary Agency. (Oct.) [/em]