Queen of the thrillers Kathy Reichs talks crafting crime novels: ‘I do know where the book is going to end’

When novelist Kathy Reichs sits down to write one of her bestselling crime thrillers, she knows how it’s going to end. The 77-year-old American author outlines a few of the early chapters and on occasion, some of the story comes to her during the writing process.

A forensic anthropologist by trade, she’s written more than 20 novels in her popular Temperance Brennan novel series, which she created, and she was also the producer and writer of the hit TV series Bones, which was based on her characters and work.

Now, the 24th book instalment, titled Evil Bones, sees Temperance, affectionately known as ‘Tempe’, faced with an unimaginable evil that escalates. What starts as the discovery of several mutilated animals, turns into a grimmer scenario as the killer moves on to bigger targets.

Joining Tempe on the gruesome trail to figure out what pure evil is and what it looks like is her niece Ruthie and retired detective Erskine ‘Skinny’ Slidell, with her daughter Katy also featuring.

“I wanted to address the question of evil. What is evil? How do different societies define evil differently? And how do they deal with evil acts?” explains Reichs as she talks about the new book.

Over the course of her career, she’s taught FBI agents about how to identify remains, has helped identify human remains from 9/11, World War Two and the Korean War, and travelled to Rwanda to testify at the UN tribunal on genocide.

“I am a forensic anthropologist. I have worked in forensic crime, and medical, legal and crime labs. I’m retired now, but I did that for years and years,” she says.

“So I have a lot of colleagues I can go to for advice when I’m either constructing the villain or laying the path for the clues. I write murder mysteries, but the difference is that the solution is driven by science, by some aspect of forensic science.

“So I always look for the advice of the experts, because I do try to get both the psychology, as much as I can, and the physical evidence correct and accurate.”

Credentials though, is not something she is short of.

Her extensive CV has seen her examining dead bodies in mortuaries, consulting for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina, and also authoring academic books.

She had written academic scientific papers long before her career in novels started and, after working on a serial murder case which formed the basis of a story, her debut thriller Deja Dead was published in 1994.

It went to the top of the bestseller list, both in the US and in Britain, and also marked the first introduction for readers to Tempe.

Other novels in the series include A Conspiracy Of Bones, The Bone Code and last year’s Fire And Bones.

So, how does she keep the character of Tempe fresh and evolving across a series which has such longevity?

“That’s a challenge,” she admits.

“You have to keep the character evolving and growing, keep the relationships evolving and growing. Each book, the reader wants to see the protagonist that they’ve come to know and love or hate, but you also have to bring in new characters.

“And so in this book, we’ve got Tempe and we’ve got Skinny Slidell, who’s someone she interacts with frequently, and there’s a bit of tension between Tempe and Skinny. But you know, in the end, I think I enjoy writing dialogue for Skinny more than anybody else, he’s a character.”

When it comes to the characters in her books though, Reichs says it’s important that each of them is different.

“You need each character to be unique and interesting, not necessarily good,” she says.

“They can be evil, but each character has to be distinct, and their actions have to contribute to the story, and they have to make sense. You can’t have people doing something or just relying on coincidence, it all has to tie together and make sense and contribute to the movement forward of the story.”

With often-detailed forensic aspects guiding the characters and forming the basis of the murder cases being investigated, Reichs’ approach to ensuring it’s still accessible is three-fold.

She explains: “I have kind of a three-prong rule-of-thumb for myself that the science parts have to be brief, which, having written scientific textbooks, that’s certainly not the case.

“And they have to be jargon-free. You can’t use a lot of special terminology that we use amongst ourselves as experts. And they have to be entertaining, which is certainly not a prerequisite for writing textbooks.

“So it’s kind of the same three sets of principles in addressing a jury. You don’t want to dumb it down, but you want them to understand it, and you want to keep their attention, so that you don’t lose them.”

With 24 books in the series now, Reichs says she isn’t necessary ‘an outliner’ when it comes to mapping out each chapter.

“I will outline maybe the first six chapters, maybe eight at the most, and then I just start writing,” she says.

“But I do know where the book is going to end, the forensic thrillers, the villain is going to get caught. But I won’t say that I haven’t had some things come to me, surprises, I guess, as you would call them, come to me along the way in the writing process.

“And I decide to maybe take a little side turn, or throw in a red herring clue, which is fair as long as you explain them and tie them off and they make sense.”

It was back in 2005 that the TV series Bones, based on Reich’s books, first aired. Lead characters FBI agent Seeley Booth was played by Buffy star David Boreanaz, with the character of forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan played by Emily Deschanel.

The series ended in 2017, with an impressive 12 seasons under its belt. Does Reichs think it will ever make a return to the small screen?

“If it did that’s a two-part question. I don’t think we’ll do it,” she says.

“We might do a reboot, like a one-time, one-off reunion kind of show. I think David and Emily might be up for that, and it would depend on whether David and Emily are available.

“But I don’t think either of them would be in interested in doing a new series, a reboot series. They both moved on, and they’re both doing other things.”

Evil Bones by Kathy Reichs is published in hardback by Simon & Schuster, and is available now