Book: Two Nights
Author: Kathy Reichs
Reviewed by: Samantha Keogh
Review made possible by Penguin Random House
Think Kathy Reichs and you automatically think human remains, bones, forensic science … that sort of thing.
As one of the few forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, this is her metier and, like all good authors, she writes about what she knows about.
That’s why her myriad of fans clamour for her books and the TV offshoot of some of her novels – “Bones”.
That’s also why, in a world in which television has made us all familiar with forensic anthropology and what it entails, some might view her work as “more of the same”.
Both groups will be delighted with Reichs’s new offering “Two Nights”, which is not about bones, or cadavers or what they can tell the experts about how a dead person has lived and, possibly, died.
In fact, forensics is not mentioned once.
Two Nights is a stand-alone thriller introducing Sunday (Sunnie) Night, a physically and mentally damaged ex-cop.
At 1.8m she is tall and rangy, has one fully working eye and an attitude towards other people which polite society might call “standoffish” but for which the less sophisticated among us have a far more earthy term.
A bomb explosion in a Jewish school kills a visiting mother and her son.
Afterwards, her daughter, who was with them at the time, just disappears.
She might be dead.
She may have been kidnapped.
She might be the brainwashed prisoner of some twisted religious sect.
The girl is not Jewish. Nor is her family. So why was she targeted?
It is for a reluctant Sunnie to find out and, maybe, make life unlivable for the bombers – in other words, kill them.
As the plot unravels, so too do Sunnie’s attempts to put her past behind her and bury the secrets of her painful and perverted childhood.
“Two Nights” is a down-home detective mystery.
It is crisply written, moves quickly and is an intriguing read.
