ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Animals have always been a large part of her life. Her parents, Ned and Evelyn Stuart, started Skeel Kennel Great Pyrenees in 1960. Carrie inherited the kennel and continues with her beloved dogs as both an AKC judge and former president of the Great Pyrenees Club of America. She lives on the same ranch she grew up on in Northern Idaho.
ABOUT THE BOOK
When Gwen Marcey’s dog comes home with a human skull and then leads her to a cabin in the woods near her Montana home, she realizes there’s a serial killer in her community. And when she finds a tortured young girl clinging to life on the cabin floor, she knows this killer is a lunatic.
Yet what unsettles Gwen most is that the victim looks uncannily like her daughter. The search for the torturer leads back in time to a neo-Nazi bombing in Washington state—a bombing with only one connection to Montana: Gwen. The group has a race-not-grace model of salvation . . . and they’ve marked Gwen as a race traitor. When it becomes clear that the killer has a score to settle, Gwen finds herself in a battle against time. She will have to use all of her forensic skills to find the killer before he can carry out his threat to destroy her—and the only family she has left.
If you would like to read the first chapter of The Bones Will Speak, go HERE.
Pattie's Review:
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Our family started watching the television series Bones this past summer, and we are all fascinated with how much can be learned from a crime scene. (We also watch NCIS, but not CSI--at which show the author pokes a bit of fun.)
Anyway, I couldn't put this book down. It came to my door on Friday night, and I finished it late Sunday night (I couldn't sleep until they caught the Bad Guy--you know how it is).
As you can see from the synopsis, Gwen is a forensic artist. The details on her profession were fascinating, and I enjoyed the technical aspects very much. The inter-agency arguing was kind of funny and frustrating, and since I know that jurisdiction is really a thing that part seemed very real-life to me.
The different parts of the mystery were really well-written, and I liked all of it.
The Christian message is not overly strong in this book, although there is prayer and quite a bit of Scripture due to Gwen's friend Beth and the white supremacist church. I gather from the fact that this is book #2 in the series that perhaps Gwen's spiritual struggle was in book #1. I would have enjoyed a bit more of that story, because here it seemed she was just avoiding Bible study and prayer and the urging of her friend out of sheer stubbornness.
I have to give a shout-out to dogs, who play a big role in this novel. Gwen's dog Winston is a Great Pyrenees, which is a sheep dog. I think the author's experience with the breed played a large part in Winston's character being so lifelike. We had a puppy early in our married life who was half Pyrenees, half blue-heeler. She was of course smaller than Winston, but no slouch in the energy and persistence departments. We loved her, but she was not a good house pet. We gave her to a family with a farm, and the farmer was thrilled because she was still young enough to train to run cattle. It was obvious with all the party tricks we'd taught her that she was a smart, bright dog (and smarter than her siblings, all of whom died by either running into traffic or farm equipment). I hope she had a busy and long life.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I recommend this book with four out of five stars.
