Temperance Brennan is back in Kathy Reichs’s highly anticipated 17th novel, Bones Never Lie, coming from Bantam in September.
Much of what Temperance Brennan does as Reichs’s popular protagonist is inspired by real-life cases or actual experiences Reichs has had throughout her career as one of the country’s leading forensic anthropologists—things like teaching the FBI how to detect and recover human remains and untangling body parts in her Montreal lab. Now, taking the series in a new direction, Temperance and her ex-partner, Andrew Ryan, pair up again to investigate two child murders that have one thing in common: the killer. “Monday Mourning, the seventh book in the series, is the only book in which the villain got away, and we are going to revisit that in Bones Never Lie, ” says Reichs. That villain, Anique Pomerleau, has resurfaced in the United States, linked to victims in Vermont and North Carolina.
In the new novel, Temperance “moves around a lot. She starts out in Charlotte, N.C., and from there goes to Costa Rica, then Montreal, then back to the Carolinas.” For the first time in the book series, fans finally get to meet Temperance’s mother. “We know quite a bit about {Temperance’s] past, her childhood, what happened with her father and her brother and of course her sister, Harry, but I have never made mention of her mother, and in this book we get to know something about her.”
Reichs’s novels are the basis for the hit TV show Bones, which was recently renewed for a 10th season, making it one of the longest-running live action series on Fox. Of the show’s success, Reichs says, “Nobody ever dreams that they go to 10 seasons.” She is a producer of the show and sometimes writes episodes for it, including one she co-wrote with her daughter in season nine called “The Dude in the Dam.” They are also collaborating on another one for season 10.
Reichs writes the successful Virals YA series with her son, Brendan Reichs, and tours to middle schools and some high schools throughout the year. She is looking forward to her book tour for Bones Never Lie in September, which will take her to Canada, the U.K., then back to the U.S. Reichs hasn’t attended BEA in years and is excited to be back—particularly at BookCon, where she has an opportunity to meet at least a few of her millions of readers.
