Tempe is called in when a plane full of college athletes goes down in the remoter parts of the forests of North Carolina. She finds herself investigating a spare foot she rescued from coyotes, a foot which is significantly more decomposed than the crash victims and which has symptoms of gout, a disease most of the dead young people had no time to contract. There is a locked house and walled courtyard out in the woods that do not appear on any maps and it seems almost as if her simple knowledge of their being there has offended the powerful of the world.

As always, Kathy Reichs manages to combine a detailed knowledge of who the dead were and how they died with a profound sense of the sadness of things. This is a book that never lets us forget amid the dissections and tests for genetic markers that each human death is that of a tragic and irreplaceable human being. Tempe is one of the more attractive of the current crop of women detectives simply because she is flawed and vulnerable as well as smart, righteous and brave. Reichs never lets you forget that crime novels should acquaint us with good people as well as human evil. --Roz Kaveney