As you may know, I’ve been reading the “Bones” series by Kathy Reich. After struggling through the first two books, I’ve been on a tear through this series (it helps that I can download them free from my library) and Cross Bones is the eighth in the series. Lately, I haven’t been writing reviews for them, just marking my notes over at Goodreads but I wanted to share some of my thoughts on this one. Why? Because it deals with a death in the Jewish orthodox community in Montreal and much of the book is set in Israel.
Yes, I’m probably hypersensitive but with rampant Antisemitism running through Europe again and present on so many US college campuses, it’s hard not to read this with a tainted eye which left me feeling like much of her characterizations were stereotypical and not in a good way. Pile that upon a plot that was reminiscent of the DaVinci Code, which I thought just okay.
Then in the end it turned out to not be a big conspiracy, it was like she used the possible conspiracy to express negative thoughts about Jews and Israel, then realized it may not be such a good idea and in the end backtracked on the entire plot to have it all come down to simple jealousy and lust.
So while I’m not ready to give up on Kathy Reichs as an author, I was not happy with how she told her tale (which by the way a fine plot), and may read her with a bit more of a critical eye going forward.