I really like the Kathy Reiches books that I have read, and I really like Tempe Brennan as a character, but this book falls short on so many levels.

I am listening to it on audio, and I discovered that the mystery only really begins at nearly the end of the novel. The rest of the book involves two cases, one that has something to do with a Vietnam war vet who was buried but is discovered as only recently having died, and Tempe must then find out who was buried in his grave. The other story involves body parts and a possible shark. For most of the novel, Brennan is in the lab looking at the bones, going out to dinner, remembering something about the bones, going back to the lab for an "aha" moment, explaining something that is hard for the reader to understand, looking at the bones again, making another "aha" moment, and so it goes.

The problem with the novel is that often the victims are unknown, so there is no reason for the reader to really want to care about them. It is very clinical. She is not really following any leads or talking to any live people and often the bones are only described as a set of number codes so the reader is not really invested.


Even the title "spider bones" seems slight, one of the victims is called spider because he is fascinated with spiders, and that is all we get. I was expecting a spider to figure prominently in the story, either a spider bite, or webbing, or an area infested with spiders, but that was all I got.

The second case, with the shark, is downright boring, and although she does seem to want to tie it in with the other case, it seems forced, and the whole book is quite a confusing mess. I really didn't care about the victims or the mystery, so solving the crime was unimportant.