Guest Blogger - Kim Alden Mallin, M.D.

Kathy Reichs is my hero. With me being a Carolina born and bred woman who practices medicine by day and struggles to write medical thrillers by night…she is the very embodiment of all of my deepest desires. Not only is she a full professor at UNC-Charlotte, working for Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina and for the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Medecine Legale for the province of Quebec…she is the best-selling author of the Temperance Brennon series, of which Bones to Ashes is her most recent.

It was her involvement with a serial killer case that inspired her first book, Deja Dead. Serge Archambault had killed two women and admitted to having killed a third victim, cutting her body up and burying it in five locations. Kathy Reichs helped with the investigation and identification of that case. Due to the unique and skillful methods used to dismember the victim, she advised the police to look for someone who knew something about anatomy - an orthopedic surgeon or butcher. And as it turned out, the killer was a butcher.

I have enjoyed each of her novels, whether the forensic evidence uncovers cults, identifies skeletons from clandestine graves or aids disaster response teams. Her accurate descriptions of the Carolinas, from the mountains of western North Carolina to Dewee’s Island, a barrier island off of my hometown of Charleston, SC, make me feel right at home. However, her greatest appeal for me lies with her protagonist, Temperance Brennon. Tempe has a great reputation in her field and is respected for the excellent work that she does. But her non-professional life is full of complications and conflicts, which reveal her humanness, making her vulnerable just like the rest of us. Her relationships with men are troubled, she struggles with her desire to drink alcoholically, and she has a love-hate relationship with her sister all of which only make her a more likable character.

So, as I stated earlier, Kathy Reichs is my hero. But quite honestly, although I find her work fascinating and I certainly would love to be able to write like her, I much prefer my living, breathing, and usually nice-smelling patients to her larvae-filled, pungent corpses.

Dr. Mallin, Kim, is a Florida buddy from the not-so-long ago Delray Beach days. (Pete)

Reichs has ten novels to her credit. We have six titles (*) in our collection and will try to fill out the run. The television crime series Bones is based on Reichs' character Temperance Brennon.

1. Deja Dead (1997)
2. Death du Jour* (1999)
3. Deadly Decisions* (2000)
4. Fatal Voyage (2001)
5. Grave Secrets (2002)
6. Bare Bones (2003)
7. Monday Mourning* (2004)
8. Cross Bones* (2005)
9. Break No Bones* (2006)
10. Bones to Ashes* (2007)