Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

The Bone Yard (Body Farm #6)

4.04 of 5 stars 4.04 · rating details · 1,123 ratings · 144 reviews

In this latest thriller from New York Times bestselling author Jefferson Bass, Dr. Bill Brockton discovers the dark side of the Sunshine state when he's called in to investigate human remains found on the grounds of a boys' reform school in Florida

The Bone Yard

The onset of summer brings predictably steamy weather to the Body Farm, Dr. Bill Brockton's human-decomposition re...more

Hardcover, 336 pages

Published March 8th 2011 by William Morrow (first published January 1st 2011)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

Quirky Southern Fiction

206th out of 317 books — 512 voters

The Calling of the Grave by Simon Beckett

Forensic Fiction: The Best of the Best...and the Worst of the Worst

9th out of 26 books — 4 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 2,099)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Oct 07, 2012 Deborah rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is not my usual type of book--I don't usually go for procedural crime/mystery novels--but I was intrigued by the reference to the Body Farm in Tennessee. It turns out that Jefferson Bass is a pair of authors, one of whom is a journalist and one of whom is the forensic anthropologist who founded the Body Farm.

The Bone Yard is a good thriller/mystery, and while it has its share of fascinating forensic science, what really got me engaged was the beautiful descriptive prose, particularly of set...more

like · see review

Jul 31, 2012 Book Concierge rated it 3 of 5 stars

Dr Bill Brockton, forensic pathologist, responds to a personal call for help from a former student now working in Tallahassee. Her sister has died – reportedly a suicide – but Angie St Claire has her doubts. His quick trip to help Angie turns into a much longer assignment when a wandering hound digs up an old skull – or two.

I really like this series. Brockton is a serious scientist, and heads the Department of Anthropology at the Univ of Tennessee in Knoxville. This is the site of the (in)famou...more

like 2 likes · see review

Mar 29, 2012 Star (The Bibliophilic Book Blog) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

Mr. Bass uses forensic anthropology and engaging writing to bring to life a fictional tale of horrific tragedy. This is a fact-based fictional novel which details the lives and deaths of young boys at a reform school in Florida. The subject matter is grim and gruesome, but is told with compassion and clarity. The desires of many that the past be laid to rest and the bodies never be found are thwarted by the discovery of bones by a playful dog and a diary by Dr. Brockton and Angie St. Clair, who...more

like 1 like · see review

Mar 22, 2012 Mysterytribune rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-tribune-must-reads

Today Jefferson Bass is probably one of the most well-known names in the sub-genre of Forensic Suspense. The writing team of Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson started out by writing Carved in Bone, reached # 25 on The New York Times Best Seller list and so far have written six books in a series named Body Farm. The Bone Yard, the sixth installment in the series is scheduled to be released in paperback edition on March 27, 2012.
A Brief Summary:

Angie St. Claire, a forensic analyst with the Florida...more Today Jefferson Bass is probably one of the most well-known names in the sub-genre of Forensic Suspense. The writing team of Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson started out by writing Carved in Bone, reached # 25 on The New York Times Best Seller list and so far have written six books in a series named Body Farm. The Bone Yard, the sixth installment in the series is scheduled to be released in paperback edition on March 27, 2012.
A Brief Summary:

Angie St. Claire, a forensic analyst with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, informs Dr. Bill Brockton, the main character of the series, that her sister has been shot by a shotgun and asks to help prove that her death was not suicide, but murder.

Brockton's quick consulting trip takes a long, harrowing detour when bones begin turning up amid the pines and live oaks of the Florida panhandle. Two adolescent skulls–ravaged by time and animals, but bearing the telltale signs of lethal fractures–send Brockton, Angie, and Special Agent Stu Vickery on a search for the long-lost victims. The quest leads them to the ruins of the North Florida Boys' Reformatory, a notorious juvenile detention facility that met a fiery end more than forty years ago.

Guided by the discovery of a diary kept by one of the school's young "students," Brockton's team finds a cluster of shallow graves, all of them containing the bones of boys who suffered violent deaths. The graves confirm one of the diary's grim claims: that one wrong move could land a boy in the Bone Yard. But as the investigation expands, it encounters opposition from the local sheriff, who's less than delighted to find forensic experts from the state capital and the Body Farm digging up dirt in his county.

As Brockton and his team close in on the truth, they find skeletons in some surprisingly prominent closets and they learn that the events that happened in North Florida Boys' Reformatory might not be pure history.

Our Take:

Jon Jefferson, the "writer" half of Jefferson Bass, is a veteran journalist, science writer, and documentary filmmaker and Dr. Bass, the duo's scientific expert, is a legend in forensic circles. So you might already guess that the result of their work is both absorbing from writing perspective and also factual from scientific standpoint.

Fans of Jefferson Bass will find this book up to the standards of his other books. The scenes explained in the story are very graphic but the author balances the disturbing investigation with a sense of humor in the characters. The clues are laid out in the plots in logical order and the details of the investigation process and in particular forensic aspects are intellectually interesting. This book is filled with a lot of forensic details in fact and while we found this very informative, this might not appeal to the readers who are looking for an easy read.

Overall, this is this finest forensic thriller we have reviewed this year and we highly recommend it to all of our readers.

Our Rating: 5.0

More at http://www.mysterytribune.com or @mysterytribune(less)

like · see review

May 21, 2011 Cornerofmadness rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
I admit it; I’m a sucker for mysteries written by actual forensic pros which is what started me on this series. I loved Dr. Bill Bass’s non-fiction and I liked the first couple in this series. I did, however, purposely skip the last one since the dust jacket had me rolling my eyes. This one sounded good but in many ways the shiny has worn off the series.

Dr. Bill Brockton is very obviously Dr. Bass himself, not just in job. Whole sections of Brockton’s life are fictionalized accounts of things Ba...more
I admit it; I’m a sucker for mysteries written by actual forensic pros which is what started me on this series. I loved Dr. Bill Bass’s non-fiction and I liked the first couple in this series. I did, however, purposely skip the last one since the dust jacket had me rolling my eyes. This one sounded good but in many ways the shiny has worn off the series.

Dr. Bill Brockton is very obviously Dr. Bass himself, not just in job. Whole sections of Brockton’s life are fictionalized accounts of things Bass has done with a lot of older man fantasy life going on (Brockton gets hit on a lot). I don’t have too much trouble with that (though the latter gets a little eye rolling from tie to time.)

In this one, it’s summer, off-season and research time for professors. Brockton is teaching a course where he meets Angie, part of a forensic team in FL who rushes off learning that her sister has ‘committed suicide.’ Angie invites Brockton to FL to help prove Kate was killed by her husband (though I was never sure why a court order for an autopsy was not enough to get an exhumation since it came in before the body was hastily buried).

Anyhow, Bill agrees and heads into the sweaty panhandle of Fl to help out only to end up in another case down there. A dog has come back with a human (child’s) skull and while consulting with Angie and Stu Vickery, homicide detective, the dog finds yet another skull. Stu realizes that they are very near an old boys' reformatory school that was shut down years ago secondary to it burning down after complaints of brutality were not enough to get it closed.

They check out the grounds, find an old homemade cemetery with metal pipe crosses and they find an old diary which once they get it preserved, relates in brutal detail the torture, rape and murder of many young boys. It’s also clear that the official cemetery for the school is not where the bones came from. It was probably used for explainable/excusable school related deaths but the murders were somewhere in ‘the bone yard’ as an anonymous tipster tells them. Unfortunately, this is also on Sheriff Judson’s jurisdiction (Stu and Angie are part of a state-wide organization) and he wants absolutely no investigation into this (a battle he almost wins). Then someone starts killing the people involved from forty years ago and those looking into it today.

It doesn’t sound like a bad story. It’s not but it does have some pretty bad weak spots. Angie and her sister’s story look like a lot of bad crime of the week cop shows you see with stiff and silly dialogue to match. It barely serves a purpose. I mean, you could probably have gotten Bill down there based on expertise just to deal with the cemetery and a new paper he could get out of it. Still, that wasn’t too big of a problem. I was put off by a lot of little things like one chapter that was nearly unreadable because it was one long liberal rant without offering any solutions (and I’m a liberal and agree with some of the points but it felt very out of place and there just so Bass could spout off his beliefs. It added nothing but a news report about the school, the only part I made it all the way through). Bass has done stuff like this before. He has all the subtly of a cross-town bus.

I was surprised that someone like Brockton wouldn’t know that places like that reform school and other asylums would have in-house cemeteries. I mean, I’ve been to a dozen or more such cemeteries personally and I’m not a forensic anthropologist. I was, however, a reservation doctor in South Dakota, where Brockton did some of his work in his younger days. Shouldn’t he know, if he was working with the tribes out there, that ‘Sioux’ is an offensive term to the Lakota? It’s a Pawnee word meaning ‘little snakes’ and I was thinking an anthropologist should be a bit more culturally sensitive (then again he is much older than me and is thinking in older terms).

But what really knocked this down for me, and almost made me give it 2 stars only, was the ending. When we get down to it, there’s no real mystery here. I figured out pretty much everything from the middle of the book on. We don’t even get a modern day snippet with a murder until past the half way mark but even then it was rather obvious who it would be. I can live with that. Let’s just say Brockton does something so dumb at the end. I don’t want to say what but I’m tired of so-called pros doing something so blatantly dumb just to get them in trouble and in need of rescue. I guess overall, it’s a good book to get from the library. I wouldn’t have wanted to spend much money on this one.
(less)

like · see review

May 01, 2011 Kathleen Hagen added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011-audio-books, 2011-mysteries

The Bone Yard, by Jefferson Bass, B-plus, Narrated by Tom Spechschulte, Produced by Harper Audio, downloaded from audible.com.

The two real-life forensic investigators from the real Body Farm, set up at the University of Tenessee to study human body decomposition, Jefferson Bass, bring us the newest Dr. Bill Brockton thriller. Dr. Brockton is asked by a former student to come to Florida to investigate the death of her sister, which everyone says is a suicide, but which she believes to be murder....more

like · see review

Apr 20, 2011 Donna in Southern Maryland rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who enjoys a good crime story with good forensics

I have read each of the Body Farm books, but this one was especially interesting because it touches on the story of the North Florida School for Boys that is located right outside of Marianna, Florida. My Grandmother lived near there, and as a child, it was always a treat for us to drive through the grounds and look at all the Christmas Light Displays they had put up. Then several years ago I saw a report on CNN detailing horrible things that had happened tot he boys that had been held there.

The...more

like 1 like · see review

Mar 27, 2011 Gaby rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: detective-and-mystery, mystery, thriller

The Bone Yard drew me in from the first chapter. Not surprisingly, Jonathan Bass paints a clear and authentic picture of the research facility. After all, Dr. Bill Bass is an expert in forensic anthropology and created The Body Farm in University of Tennessee while Dr. Jon Jefferson wrote and produced two films on the facility. I learned a bit about forensic pathology, which made the book even more enjoyable.

As heroes go, Dr Bill Brockton is an enjoyable one to follow. An acknowledged expert in...more

like · see review

Apr 26, 2011 Luanne Ollivier rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've been a fan of the Jefferson Bass forensic novels from the very beginning. The Bone Yard is the sixth book in this riveting series.

Recurring character Dr. Bill Brockton is the director of the Body Farm (an anthropology research facility) in Tennessee. Here's the neat part - co author Dr. Bill Bass is himself the founder of the original Body Farm and a world recognized forensic anthropologist. His writing, scenarios and plots have the unmistakable ring of truth and authenticity, which make t...more

like · see review

Mar 18, 2011 Dharma Kurlind rated it 4 of 5 stars

Courtesy of Lost Art Audiobook Review

Scientific Suspenseful Heartbreak:
A) The Science
In many ways, this series and this novel blur the edges of reality and fiction. The author’s afterword explains in detail exactly which parts of this novel are true, but even without giving anything away, the basic science underlying the novel is factual. First of all, Jefferson Bass, like Ilona Andrews, is really a pen name for two writers. One of the authors, Dr. Bill Bass, like the fictional Dr. Bill Brockton...more Courtesy of Lost Art Audiobook Review

Scientific Suspenseful Heartbreak:
A) The Science
In many ways, this series and this novel blur the edges of reality and fiction. The author’s afterword explains in detail exactly which parts of this novel are true, but even without giving anything away, the basic science underlying the novel is factual. First of all, Jefferson Bass, like Ilona Andrews, is really a pen name for two writers. One of the authors, Dr. Bill Bass, like the fictional Dr. Bill Brockton, is a world-renowned forensic anthropologist. The Body Farm, at which the fictional Dr. Bill teaches, is a place that the real Dr. Bill founded, officially known as the University of Tennessee's Anthropology Research Facility. Because the real Dr. Bill writes a first-person point of view of the fictional Dr. Bill, there’s tons of information on forensic science that’s accurate, or at least sounds accurate to me. For the most part, this was well done, but like in A Discovery of Witches, the academics are sometimes a bit too much, and although I appreciated it, my mind did wonder.

B) The Suspense
The book is a mystery and a thriller, but I’ve listened to plenty of mysteries and thrillers that fail to engage the reader. The Bone Yard works. It’s all in the pacing. So you’re listening to the scientific information, to the description of the scenes, to the description of the hotel, of a memory, and then the sentences start getting clipped. The descriptions start slowing down, and zooming in. It’s almost as if there’s that creepy background music behind the words. You know that something’s coming around the corner, and when it does, you still jump. There aren’t many such situations in the book, but when they pop up, they catch you.

C) The Heartbreak
Early in the audiobook, Dr. Bill describes watching a documentary on child soldiers of Sudan, and how listening to something so horrible done to a child made it difficult for him to sleep at night. That’s a precursor to some of the parts of this audiobook. When the police start to suspect that the skull they found dated back to the 1960s, I was a bit disappointed. It’s hard for a listener to connect to a tragedy that happened far away or long ago. That’s where the diary comes in. Jefferson Bass does a great job writing from the point of view of a very young boy. Of course, it’s written much better than most adults can tell a story, but the voice is sincere and authentic. It grips the reader immediately. You empathize with the boy, feeling what he feels. And that’s pain. The main conflict hurts to listen to don't listen to it before going to bed.

On Narration:
This is the first time I listened to an audiobook read by Tom Stechschulte, and the first thing I noticed was how much he sounded like an adult Tom Hanks. His voice has a nice tenor to it that works well with the narrative tone in The Bone Yard. It’s part film noir and part professorial. I was a bit put off by Tom Stechschulte's female voices are off, but inauthentic female voices are rather usual for male narrators. That aside, Tom Stechschulte’s villain voices are epic. He actually puts a slight growl in the reading.(less)

like · see review

Mar 21, 2011 Dorie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-fiction

As the book opens, Dr. Bill Brockton is teaching forensic techniques to a class visiting his “Body Farm” at the University of Tennessee. Angie St. Claire is a visiting Florida forensic analyst who leaves abruptly when she receives an urgent phone call. Later she calls Dr. Brockton and asks him for help – her sister’s death has been ruled a suicide, but she believes she was murdered by Angie’s brother-in-law. Bill and Angie form a professional bond over investigating the family death, and when a...more

like 1 like · see review

Feb 08, 2012 Kevin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, series

The writing duo that comprise Jefferson Bass can normally be counted on to provide an interesting mystery and The Bone Yard is no exception. What is unusual is that most of the book takes place in Florida instead of Tennessee. Doc Brockton manages to get involved with a couple of unattached skulls that were brought home by a hound. It turns out that there had been a Florida boys' reformatory in the area that had burned down, with several fatalities, some years ago. Were the bones coming from the...more

like · see review

Feb 03, 2013 Philip rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was another one I just picked off the shelf not knowing anything about it, but I quite enjoyed it.

I have tried Kathy Reichs (who’s supposed to be the mac daddy in this field) but I couldn’t get into her books. For me they were much too technical, like reading a text book and not a novel. The Bone Yard is much easier read while still conveying all the forensic detail you need to make this kind of book work.

The story has a good setup; Dr. Bill Brockton works at a Body Farm – one of those plac...more

like · see review

Mar 27, 2011 Caitlin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

To be completely honest I started reading these books because they are co-written by Dr. Bill Bass, the founder of the famous Body Farm and the University of Tennessee. I have degrees in biological anthropology plus I love crime stuff and Dr. Bass is an amazing man. Along with his co-writer, Jon Jefferson, the Body Farm series truly brings an accurate picture of forensic anthropology to life. This is not glamorous work with fancy labs and stilettos. This is work done in various conditions in and...more

like · see review

May 30, 2011 Alex Arth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dr Bill Brockton who created the Body Farm at the university of Tennessee is asked by a friend to investigate her sister's death. It was ruled as a suicide, but her sister believed that she was murdered by her husband. While in Florida, a skull dug up by a dog is found. She asks Br. Brockton to take a look at it. He finds that it is the skull of an adolescent who was murdered. Eventually he finds that a reform school for boys that burned down long ago was the source of the skull. They had a smal...more

like · see review

Jun 02, 2012 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

This novel takes Dr. Brockton away from his typical anthropology cases in Tennessee and leads him on a disturbing hunt for justice in the back woods of Florida. Dr. Brockton uncovers cases of severe abuse and murder that happened decades ago at a reform school for boys. While trying to uncover the truth, he is almost killed himself.

This book was different in alot of ways from the usual Bone Farm books. It centered around murders that happened decades ago while also spotlighting abuse that kids...more

like · see review

Mar 20, 2011 Pamela rated it 4 of 5 stars

This gets a little technical, but is a really good look at a difficult problem: reform school abuse. The authenticity and knowledge of the subject matter makes it rate a 4.0. The book is a reminder of how horrible human beings can be to other human beings and how children are abused by authority figures; the book isn't always pleasant reading because the topic is one that we wish didn't exist. The author's notes at the end, defining truth and fiction, were especially interesting. I've read all o...more

like · see review

Nov 14, 2012 J.C. Daniels rated it 3 of 5 stars

Okay, so the narrative at times got kind of boring... I get the feeling the author is kind of teaching us as we read, and the way he does it gets kind of dry, but what he is teaching is so fascinating that I got wrapped up in it, despite the dryness of the 'tone', so to speak.

And the story was compelling...very much so.

I can't say I'll ever read this book again, but I'll definitely check out more by the author. So despite the fact that book got a little meh at times, I couldn't real stop rea...more

like · see review

Nov 11, 2012 Jim rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'd read another Body Farm book years ago, and picked this up at the library without remembering much about the first one I'd read. In this one Dr. Bill Brockton, a forensic anthropologist, explores and exposes the atrocities committed by staff of a boys school in Florida. This is a very entertaining story of the struggle of good to triumph over evil. I want to read more from this series. I have one caveat. The authors describe the actual excavation of an Arikara burial site. Although I know tha...more

like · see review

May 02, 2012 Lora King rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-crime, fiction

I so enjoy these books. This is the first time Dr. Brockton has headed down to Fla. and it's a doozy of a story. A dog finds a bone and opens up a whole new can of worms for the authorities. A boys reformatory school in the 50's-60's was the scene of horrible injustice and Dr. B helps shed light on the sicko's who ran it, and continue in power today. We need to be so vigilant about monitoring those who oversee young offenders. You want to shower after reading this story, but it's a great mystery...more

like · see review

May 14, 2011 Sue rated it 5 of 5 stars

Chilling! Book is written in 1st person - that of Dr. Bill Brockton - a forensic anthropolist based at the Body Farm in Knoxville TN. He is asked to help a former student prove her sister was murdered. While in Florida, they investigate a skull found in a backwoods area by a dog. Another skull & a femur are found by the same dog. From there, things still start to happen. Fascinating weaving of past & present events. One of the co-authors is Dr. Bill Bass, the founder of UT's Anthropology...more

like · see review

Oct 15, 2011 Sydney Blake rated it 5 of 5 stars

Another great addition to the Jefferson Bass books. Dr. B heads to FL to help a collegue deal with a family emergency. While there, he is thrown head first into another, interesting and suspenseful investigation. When a skull of a young child is discovered by a dog, a whole world is opened that shows the lack of justice in the reform of young children who have made mistakes. Complete page turner. Can't wait for the next installment guys!

This is a great story that features Dr. B away from TN and...more

like · see review

Apr 06, 2013 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

The world of forensic anthropology is a little quiet at the Body Farm, so when a request is made to help somewhere else Dr Bill Brockton jumps at the chance. He is asked to help a former student whose sister has died supposedly by her own hand. But this case leads to a boys school where a number of graves are discovered.

To make this story more chilling, the boys school did exist. I also like the way his real history is sometimes added into to these stories - I am left not knowing what is fact a...more

like · see review

Feb 11, 2013 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Jefferson Bass, the master storyteller dazzles readers with his latest in the Body Farm series. While the reader has been taken away from Knoxville before, this is Bass’ first venture out of state, down into Florida, to help consult on a mysterious skull and a suicide that looks a lot more like murder. The reader can expect the same fast-paced action and character banter that have made the previous five books a success, but some new ideas injected into the mix to keep the story fresh and the rea...more

like · see review

Oct 28, 2012 Kristin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-i-own

It had been a little while since I read the last Jefferson Bass book, but the authors are quick to remind readers of the main consequence of that book, so if you haven't read the books in order, I recommend doing so before proceeding with this one. Unlike the other books, which primarily take place in Tennessee, this one has professor Bill Brockton taking a side trip to Florida to help Angie, a colleague in that state's forensics department, on an independent investigation into whether her siste...more It had been a little while since I read the last Jefferson Bass book, but the authors are quick to remind readers of the main consequence of that book, so if you haven't read the books in order, I recommend doing so before proceeding with this one. Unlike the other books, which primarily take place in Tennessee, this one has professor Bill Brockton taking a side trip to Florida to help Angie, a colleague in that state's forensics department, on an independent investigation into whether her sister's death was a suicide or homicide at the hands of Angie's unstable brother-in-law. While there, a dog digs up a long buried skull near the site of a private school for troubled boys, which burned down over 50 years before, killing some of the students. When the skull shoes injuries not consistent with dying in a fire, and the dog brings home a second skull with similar injuries, Brockton stays a while longer and helps Angie try to get to the bottom of whether the skulls are related to the school deaths or something else.
I ejnoyed this book because the action kept coming, and while there were a few convenient coincidences, it seemed plausable that the events could occur in real life. The authors seemed to use the book to spread their views on alternative education for juvenile delinquents, and while I don't necessarily agree with all of them, their points were well made.
In terms of the series, I feel as if Brockton's character won't be the focus for too much longer. Granted, Bill Bass, one of the authors, is clearly the basis for the character and his own life influences the books. I feel though that Brockton is losing his connection and perhaps desire to work for the Body Farm, and the authors have set up a natural successor in Brockton's graduate student Miranda Lovelady. As a graduate student, Miranda won't be able to stay in that role forever and keep the books on a realistic pace, but I hope the authors don't decide she's expendable, as she's one of the only other consistent characters in the series.(less)

like · see review

Oct 23, 2011 Shiela rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, suspense, thriller

Jefferson Bass' books are always a treat and this one was no exception.

After Dr. Bill Brockton attempts to help a fellow forensic analyst prove that her sister's apparent suicide was actually a homicide, Brockton inadvertantly finds himself in the middle of a case that is both horrifying and based in reality. When two adolescent skulls discovered by a dog are uncovered showing signs of severe physical abuse near the burnt ruins of a Boy's Reformatory School, Bass and his team must delve into th...more

like · see review

Jan 02, 2012 Kristen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: to-read-series, to-read-mystery, kindle, 2012

I liked this book, the 6th in the series by the writing team of Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson ("Jefferson Bass"). I did not love it, however, because I found it completely unbelievable.

The part of the story centering around Angie and her sister was wholly unbelievable. In no way did I buy this woman's supposed grief over her sister's death. She was joking around with coworkers a day after the murder? She didn't possess any sense of urgency or believability or what would be considered true grief,...more

like · see review

Aug 13, 2011 Jlaurenmc rated it 4 of 5 stars

Several years ago, I sat in a crowd of people and watched a body decompose in a series of time-release photographs. In the heat of a Tennessee summer, the decomposition took about two weeks. I was both repelled and fascinated.

The presenter of the photographs? Dr. Bill Bass, founder of the University of Tennessee's Body Farm, a facility designed to study the field of forensic anthropology.

I first heard about the Body Farm in Patricia Cornwell's book of the same name, one of her Kay Scarpetta seri...more

like · see review

Jan 06, 2013 Patricia rated it 4 of 5 stars

I had an idea of what to expect as I knew it was based on the White House Boys story from a Florida "reform" school. There's a slight side plot dealing with the FMC that was kind of interesting. It seemed to go into that plot and then just leave it alone, referencing it briefly every now and then. I did enjoy it though. Pacing was nice, characters were good for the most part and I continually wanted to know what was going to happen next. I would definitely check out another novel.

like · see review

May 25, 2011 Barb rated it 3 of 5 stars

3 1/2 stars. good mystery, a litle grisly at times. reminds me of kay scarpetta. molly, i think you would like this series. authors are interesting. "Jefferson Bass is the writing team of Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson. Dr. Bass, a world-renowned forensic anthropologist, founded the University of Tennessee's Anthropology Research Facility -- the Body Farm -- a quarter-century ago.Jon Jefferson is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker."

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 69 70 next »

Thriller

14 users

Mystery > Crime

10 users

Anthropology

4 users

Thriller > Mystery Thriller

4 users

Suspense

3 users

Mystery > Murder Mystery

3 users

Medical

2 users

Adult

2 users

Adult Fiction

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Jefferson Bass

Jefferson Bass on FACEBOOK
http://www.facebook.com/JeffersonBass...

Jon Jefferson
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

Bill Bass
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

Jefferson Bass is the pen name of Jon Jefferson, writer, and Dr. Bill Bass, renowned forensic anthropologist. Jefferson and Bass have collaborated on 2 nonfiction books and 6 crime novels; their 7th novel, The Inquisitor's Key, will...more

More about Jefferson Bass...

Books by Jefferson Bass

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About The Bone Yard

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

title link	preview: The Bone Yard
avg rating	preview: The Bone Yard Goodreads rating: 4.04 (1123 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8704975-the-bone-yard?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348585283l/8704975.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8704975-the-bone-yard?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Bone Yard by Jefferson Bass[/url]

The Bone Yard (Body Farm #6)

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (11)

Genres

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Jefferson Bass

Books by Jefferson Bass

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About The Bone Yard