Downloading Flesh and Bone
Anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton founded Tennessee's world-famous Body Farm—a small piece of land where corpses are left to decay in order to gain important forensic information. Now, in the wake of a shocking crime in nearby Chattanooga, he's called upon by Jess Carter—the rising star of the state's medical examiners—to help her unravel a murderous puzzle. But afterre-creating the death scene at the Body Farm, Brockton discovers his career, reputation, and life are in dire jeopardy when a second, unexplained corpse appears in the grisly setting.
Accused of a horrific crime—transformed overnight from a respected professor to a hated and feared pariah—Bill Brockton will need every ounce of his formidable forensic skills to escape the ingeniously woven net that's tightening around him . . . and to prove the seemingly impossible: his own innocence.
**
From Publishers Weekly
At the start of the entertaining second Body Farm novel from the pseudonymous Bass (the writing team of forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Bass and journalist Jon Jefferson), Dr. Bill Brockton ties a dead man dressed in drag to a tree at the Body Farm (a facility he heads outside Knoxville, Tenn., devoted to researching postmortem decay), in an effort to replicate a recent murder. Dr. Bill's just beginning a romantic relationship with another participant in this experiment, Chattanooga medical examiner Dr. Jess Carter. The story veers wildly from fascinating forensics with a high yuck factor to sophomoric and corny romantic byplay, often in the same scene. Fans of the bestselling first book in the series, Carved in Bone , and readers with a penchant for the gross and grisly will take to Dr. Bill, a hero with a big heart who isn't afraid to tackle complicated issues while solving mildly engrossing mysteries. Dr. Bass and Jefferson are the coauthors of Death's Acre , about the actual Body Farm. 7-city author tour. (Feb.)
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From Booklist
Forensic anthropologist Bill Brockton, who made his debut in Carved in Bone (2005), returns to defend himself against a charge of murder. The mummified body of a woman is found in a cave in Tennessee. Brockton, who works at the University of Tennessee's Body Farm (founded in real life by Bill Bass, one-half of "Jefferson Bass"), has seen his share of gruesome sights, but this one has him stymied. And when a second body turns up, Brockton finds himself square in the spotlight. The second Body Farm mystery is as smoothly written as the first (Bass' coauthor, Jon Jefferson, is an accomplished journalist), but it goes a lot farther in exploring its protagonist, a man who spends his life looking at death. The story is razor sharp, too, with a nice mixture of mystery and horror. Fans of forensic fiction will want to add this author to their list of favorites. David Pitt
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