Pros: good plane-crash reconstruction plot, fair "star chamber" plot
Cons: what was a Montreal detective doing in North Carolina?
The Bottom Line: Kathy Reichs fourth Tempe Brennan novel combines two investigations; an airline crash and dead bodies at a mysterious mountain compound. At least it's all in North Carolina this time.
scmrak's Full Review: Kathy Reichs - Fatal Voyage: A Crime Novel
How about a little review of Physics 101? Now there's a sentence guaranteed to frighten off a significant readership! Fear not; stick with me. Our topic for today is Newton's first law, which pretty much says, "Anything that's moving would rather keep on moving, and anything that's not would rather stay still." A little more study of this phenomenon, which the pocket-protector set calls "inertia," reveals that not only does a moving entity -- ball, teenager, SUV -- prefer to keep moving, it also prefers to keep moving in a straight line instead of changing direction. But you knew that, right?
Now let's ponder scmrak's first law of mystery series inertia: "An author, once having found his groove, will avoid upsetting his character's equilibrium by changing setting, supporting cast, or other characteristics." You might also call this the "dance with the one who brung ya" or the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" syndrome. You want proof? Just look at such long-running mystery series as Sue Grafton's alphabet books (Kinsey Millhone) or Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware books. Particularly in the case of Grafton, the series has been running on fumes for the last two or three books. A few writers try to shake off this inertia by having cops quit the force (Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series) or by killing off a significant other (Karen Kijewski's Kat Colorado series); most just muddle on ahead.
Sometimes a new or "up-and-coming" writer falls into the inertia trap within just a couple of books. The insistence on continuity from one episode of a series to another may be comforting to fans, but it can also lead to some strange plot contrivances. Kathy Reichs' Fatal Voyage is an example of a pretty good square plot that suffers for having been forced into a round hole. Let's have a look at that plot, shall we?
Of All the Gin Joints in All the Towns...
Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is one of the first medical examiner types on site at an airplane crash just outside Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Tempe, who normally spends half her time in Montreal and half her time in North Carolina, immediately plunges into the grisly task identification as the badly damaged bodies of sixty or so victims are recovered; she also helps determine the cause of death and identify forensic clues for the NTSB's incident team investigating the mid-air explosion that brought down the plane. Was it a bomb? a missile? what killed all those people, including the entire mens' and womens' soccer teams at a nearby university?
A severed foot Tempe stole from a hungry coyote doesn't fit the incident profile: that body part has been exposed to the elements for too long, and Tempe's studies indicate a victim who does not appear on the passenger manifest. No one of that age and ethnicity is among the dead. And then there's a strange stone compound hidden in the hills amidst the crash site, a fortified building that none of the locals seems to know anything about.
Geddouddahere, Ya Bum!
A scientist of impeccable credentials and world renown, Tempe is mysteriously barred from the crash site and the investigation under the cloud of "incompetence." Distraught, she retreats briefly into the arms (and bed) of her lawyer ex-husband before bouncing back in a flurry of energy to track down the ownership of the strange compound and identify the missing owner of that severed foot. She's helped along by a 70-ish lab worker named Primrose, a slavish and slobbery Chow mix named Boyd, and a Montreal cop named Ryan. When two of the three are shot, Tempe knows she's on the right track.
Elements of a Mystery Series
Kathy Reichs joined the ranks of forensic scientists turned author (think of Patricia Cornwell) with the introduction of Tempe Brennan in 1997's Deja Dead. Like Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta, Brennan is a middle-aged divorced mother whose skills, knowledge, and drive place her at the pinnacle of her profession. But unlike the sophisticated Scarpetta, Brennan's personal life is more unsettled. She's a recovering alcoholic with a strange family and a messy love life. In ensuing episodes of the series (Death du Jour and Deadly Decisions), Brennan began contemplating a tempestuous affair with Montreal cop Andrew Ryan while she was solving mysterious deaths in and near her dual homes in Montreal and North Carolina.
The series' biggest strength is Tempe's engaging character: the diminutive ex-blonde is a brilliant scientist with feet of clay when it comes to her personal life and an often near-fatal lack of common sense. Reichs has also demonstrated a Puckish sense of humor (embodied by Tempe's off-the-wall sister Harry) and excellent skills at setting a scene. On the down side, the second and third novels plugged into an increasingly unlikely theme of finding related corpses in Montreal and North Carolina, as some strange twist of fate had led murdering scum to live almost exactly the same double-domicile life as Brennan. Character development is somewhat spotty: recurring characters (excepting Brennan) are almost never surprising; villains are almost instantly recognizable. Even fans of the subgenre of forensic science mysteries are prone to admit that Reichs appears forced to reach for plot points from time to time. Still, the science is good and accessible, and the series has merit.
Square Peg, Round Hole
Fatal Voyage is the first entry in the Tempe Brennan series to take place entirely in the States. Brennan was scheduled to report to the laboratory where she plies her trade in Montreal just a few days after the accident, but that shocking event put her plans on indefinite hold. So it's strange indeed to find Tempe's pal Lieutenant Ryan wandering around the crash site within a few hours after her arrival on the scene. Reichs shoe-horned him into the plot by having his partner, Bertrand, ferrying a prisoner back to Montreal on the doomed flight. Now frankly, Ryan's presence doesn't make a bit of sense -- even if his partner had been on the plane, Ryan possesses neither expertise nor jurisdiction in a US plane crash, so he has no business there at all.
Apparently Ryan's only present to lend Tempe a bit of moral support during her moment of disgrace, since the two of them do precious little to continue the slow mating dance they've been leading for the past three books. It's almost as if Ryan, like the mongrel Boyd, simply had to mark his "territory" in some manner. Whatever the reason. Ryan's presence is distracting from the plot and his few snippets of action and dialog could just as easily have been carried out by a flat character or two. This is one case where Reichs should have shaken off that inertia.
Overall
Reichs has done a good job of merging an ongoing investigation of violent death with forensic anthropology, shifting back and forth often enough to keep readers interested in the details of the crash-scene investigation. Even readers already familiar with the science of crash reconstruction (those who've read Michael Crichton's Airframe, for instance) will find the crash investigation subplot fascinating. The anthropolgy subplot is somewhat less likable: it starts well (though a careful reader will spot one of the bad guys immediately) but gets muddled toward the middle. Though Reichs reveals solutions to both mysteries (crash and anthropological) in sequence, the revelations in Tempe's extracurricular investigation seem almost anticlimactic. We're also treated to some nice pet scenes, a little of the history of Tempe's foundered twenty-year marriage, and some moments of panic while Tempe's convinced that her daughter was on the downed plane.
A good airplane crash plot and an average anthropology plot, but why the heck was Ryan even there? Just barely good enough for four stars.
Temperance Brennan hears the news on her car radio. An Air TransSouth flight has gone down in the mountains of western North Carolina, taking with it ...More at Barnes & Noble.com
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