Not Such A Thrilling Journey... (Fatal Voyage - Kathy Reichs)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	Fatal Voyage - Kathy Reichs
Date:	02/07/05 (139 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gets better as it goes along...

Disadvantages: Nowhere near the high standards associated with this author.

Being a fan of Kathy Reichs, I was looking forward to reading her fourth novel, having previously really enjoyed the first three. I have only recently got into the thriller genre and am lapping it up, trying out different authors, but Reichs has been my favourite so far, along with Martina Cole.

Fatal Voyage again features Dr Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist. This time, there is (as you may have guessed from the book’s title) a plane crash that needs investigating, as it appears suspicious. Tempe is called upon to help out and temporarily moves to the area, Swain County in North Carolina, USA.

While working on the large crash site, Tempe wanders off and discovers a foot, away from the main area of investigation. Unsure if the foot is from one of the plane crash’s victims or from another suspicious incident, she carries out some forensic tests to determine what she can.

But someone somewhere wants her silenced and when she is accused of jeopardising the investigation, her part in it looks to be prematurely over. The news reporters soon pick up on the apparent scandal and she is hounded by journalists. But she is determined to try to get the bottom of the mystery and continue helping as much as she can. She is assisted in this by her former beau Andrew Ryan and Swain County’s Sheriff Lucy Crowe.

It soon becomes clear that the foot is the key to something sinister and evidence Tempe uncovers suggests it has been going on for decades. It seems to involve an isolated house in the back-end of nowhere and a long line of prominent figures. But does it involve murder? And by researching these delicate areas, is Tempe putting her own life in danger?

The problem I had with this book was its pacing. I found it was very slow to start with and didn’t grip me as her novels usually do. It was good enough to keep me reading, but 200 pages in, I still felt it hadn’t really got going and it was only in the last hundred pages or so that it really became interesting and I recognised the Reichs I know and love.

I felt the novel got rather bogged down with all the techno-jargon at times. All the abbreviations used were tedious and interrupted the flow of the text. While FBI is one we are all aware of, the others used were often less familiar – DMORT, NTSB, FEMA, CEO, NDMS, DMAT, OEP, etc. At times it felt like working from some strange code, having to decipher these before understanding what was going on in the story.

These novels are usually a great mixture of Tempe’s personal life and professional life, which make her seem a well-rounded and real character that you care about. But I felt this wasn’t explored as much as in the previous three novels and this resulted in our heroine being somehow less believable. The characters as a whole didn’t quite seem as deep as usual and I found I couldn’t picture some of them at all, which is rare for this author, as usually they are described so well, that they leap off the page is glorious Hollywood Technicolor!

The star of Fatal Voyage for me was Boyd, who is a lovely, cuddly, big, bounding dog. Tempe’s usual pet is Birdie the cat (who is in this one too, but not often) but here, she ends up dog-minding and Boyd manages to help out in her work, by using his doggy instincts and great sense of smell. This use of a dog did worry me though, as I was always expecting something bad to happen to him, which would upset me as an animal lover. (I’m not revealing if it does or not!)

The plot wasn’t as tight as I was expecting either. Usually Reichs constructs her novels with a mastery I admire, throwing out tendrils of ideas and clues which somehow all unravel perfectly clearly by the final page. This time, I felt that didn’t happen.

First, all the attention is focused on the plane crash, then after a while it almost seems as if the author got bored of this subject and decided to go off on a completely new tangent. Although this does work in the end and things come round in a circle, there is a large part of the book which feels like she has started writing a completely new novel in the middle!

The second half of the book is worth waiting for, as it is fast-paced, exciting and includes all the elements I love about her novels. You get to follow the detective side of her job that I find so fascinating and educational, where you discover how bones and remains throw up so much information, which is essential for solving crimes and identifying missing persons.

So I am pleased I persevered and read through the duller parts, but the novel as a whole was definitely disappointing. While her first three novels rated 8 or 9 out of 10, I could only give this one 6 ½ out of 10. If I had read this first, I doubt I would have bothered to pick up another Kathy Reichs! But as it is, I just hope Fatal Voyage was a black mark on an otherwise brilliant report and that next time she’ll do better.



Fatal Voyage by Kathy Reichs
ISBN 0-09-930720-0
Cover price £6.99 paperback
www.randomhouse.co.uk

Summary: Dull at times, good ending but sub-standard for Reichs.