Paperback: Morbid finds

This fifth instalment in the grave-digging adventures of Dr Temperance Brennan - mother, lover, co-author of an article on septic tank burial - is serious stuff, despite the pun.

Right from the acknowledgements, Reichs installs herself on the moral high ground. The Twin Towers victims get a nod ("I have touched their bones. I mourn for them"), as do her daughters, who accompanied her on a fact-finding trip to Guatemala - "You shopped while I dug, but your presence in the evening eased the pain."

The rest of Grave Secrets does much to explain their decision. When Brennan's not handing people bits of their grandchildren, she's usually to be found hunting for mutilated fibulas in "a stew of human faeces and microbial dung". This kind of detail is more gore porn than healthy realism, but the punch and drive of Reichs's prose pulls you through, just about.