To use a cricketing term, the Dr Temperance Brennan book series by Kathy Reichs (left) is 24 not out, and still looking good. The series featuring the forensic anthropologist began with Déjà Dead in 1997. For anyone new to the novels, I’ll just direct you here for background information. Tempe (her preferred nickname) is in her Charlotte NC autopsy room and has just finished one of her trademark investigations into long-dead human remains. She is planning a few days away with her long-time boyfriend, Quebec cop Andrew Ryan, but when she gets home, she has a series of ‘phone calls which persuade her to drive to Washington DC to help with the investigation of a fatal fire in an old house in Foggy Bottom.
The Victorian property had been most recently used as a low rent boarding house, and amid the devastation, there are four dead bodies, all victims of the fire. When part of the ground floor gives way under the weight of one of the fire officers, a hidden cellar full of alcoves and passages is revealed, and it is in one of the chambers that Tempe discovers another corpse tied inside a burlap sack. While the charred remains of the four fire victims are quickly identified, the corpse in the burlap bag is more mysterious. The body is that of a woman, small and slender, but how long she had been in that bag, in that cellar is more problematic. Via one of those nerdish experts who specialise in arcane knowledge, Tempe learns that the sack in which the victim was confined probably dates from the late 1940s.
Tempe, with the help of a TV reporter called Ivy Doyle, learns that the reason for the fire may be connected to a group of hoodlums back in the prohibition era. The Foggy Bottom Gang. The ringleaders were Leo, Emmitt, and Charles “Rags” Warring, who had worked as laborers in their father’s barrel shop. When the (illegal) booze started flowing, all three quickly got caught up in the wild and sometimes violent underworld of Washington, D.C. But what is the connection between events decades ago and modern day Washington DC? Eventually, Tempe finds out the truth, and it reinforces the old adage about revenge being a dish best served cold and, in this case, slow.
The book rattles along at breakneck speed, and Tempe Brennan is her usual sassy, quick-thinking self, a persona that Kathy Reich’s millions of readers have come to know and love over the 27 years since Tempe first appeared. Thy narrative style is unmistakably and uniquely American – slick, witty, and sharp as a tack. It won’t appeal to readers who like gentle cosy crime mysteries set in idyllic British locations, but it is a testament to its style and commercial appeal that a TV series based on the books ran from September 13, 2005, concluding on March 28, 2017, airing for 246 episodes over 12 seasons.
Fire and Bones is gripping and addictively readable, despite the fact that – like books in other long-running American series by writers like Jonathan Kellerman, James Patterson and Harlan Coben – it is formulaic. The formula works, readers love it, so you will hear no complaints from me. It is published by Simon & Schuster, and is out today, 1st August.
SO FAR – On January 13th 1926, Milly Crabtree, 25 year-old wife of Cecl Crabtree, is found battered to death at their home, Manor Farm in Ladbroke. 19 year-old George Sharpes is arrested for her murder. As is the way with these, things, the wheels of justice turn very slowly, and it was February before Sharpes came to face magistrates in Southam. The courtroom, normally used as a cinema (pictured above), was packed, and the onlookers were spellbound as a confession from George Sharpes was read to the court.
The magistrates wasted little time in stating that George Sharpes had a serious case to answer, and the case was moved on to be examined at the March Assizes in Warwick. The case was presided over by Mr Justice Shearman. The only possible line for the defence to take was that Sharpes was insane at the time at the time he committed the murder, and Sharpes’s mother was produced to state that her son had suffered an unfortunate childhood. Her pleas fell on deaf ears, however. Rejecting the claims that George Sharpes was insane, the judge donned the black cap and sentenced him to death. The execution was fixed for April and, as was almost always the case, a petition was set up to ask for clemency. The case was taken to appeal, in front of Lord Chief Justice Avory, who was perhaps not the most welcome choice for Sharpes’s defence team. Avory, a notorious “hanging judge”, had been memorably described:
Manor Farm in Ladbroke dates back, according to the data on British Listed Buildings, to the mid 18th century. For architectural historians, it adds:
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These days when Fenland fruit needs picking, the hands that do the work will belong to people who come from places like Vilnius. Klaipeda, Varna, Daugavpils, or Bucharest. Back in the day, however,the pickers came from less exotic places like Hackney, Hoxton or Haringey, and the temporary migration of Londoners to the Wisbech area was an established part of the early summer season. In the autumn, the same people – predominantly women and children, might head south to the hop fields of Kent, but in the July of 1912 the Londoners were here in Fenland.
fullybooked2017 