Speaking in Bones by Kathy Reichs

When the woman walks in her office she knows she's a bit "off".  She's different.  Her passion is not the usual.  The woman looks for missing people and connects them with bodies found and unidentified.  She's had some success at it and now she thinks the bones Temperance has in storage (what there are of them) belong to a missing person she's trying to trace.  Temperance is not sure, but she's willing to hear her out.  The problem is that Mrs. Strike is going to make her care about the missing Cora...

Bantam Books and Net Galley allowed me to read this book for review (thank you).  It is being published today, so you can get a copy now. This is part of an ongoing series.  If you like to read books in sequence, you'll need to pick the others up as well.  This book is fine as a stand alone.

Temperance starts on a hunt for more bones since she has so few.  She knows where they were found, she gets the cops involved and she heads out with the cop and his dog.  More bones are found.  And the mystery gets deeper.

The author gives you a small church that believes in demons and Satan and exorcism and casting the sin out, a family that has a genetic deformity, and more to make the search for the missing Cora even harder.  It doesn't help when Temperance determines that the body they have found is NOT Cora.

This is an interesting story line even if it is a bit unusual.  I enjoyed the forensic work, the characters she works with, and her love interest.  I wasn't terribly surprised by the outcome but nothing was quite right in this story and it ended that way, too.  I wonder what kind of case Temperance will get into next...