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Good day everyone. Welcome to the Bringing Inspiration to Earth's show.
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To find out more about our upcoming shows or access
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to our more than sixteen hundred podcast episodes, visit our
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website at Byte Radio dot be. Today, my special guest
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is Kathy Reichs, author of Evil Bones, a Temperance Brennan novel.
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When an elderly woman crashes her car during a storm
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and swears she's seen a sign from Satan, Brennan is
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called to the scene and discovers a grotesque display a
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painted human like head nailed to a tree. Soon see
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on Earth, a string of similarly staged killings involving mutilated
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animal skulls, ritual markings, and a trail suggesting something far
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darker than local superstition. Kathy Reich's first novel, Days Dead,
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published in nineteen ninety seven, won an Ellis Award for
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Best First Novel and was an international bestseller. Evil Bones
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is Kathy's twenty fourth novel featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
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Kathy was also a producer of Fox Television's longest running
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scripted drama, Bones, which was based on her work and
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her novels. Kathy is one of very few forensic anthropologists
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certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. For more information,
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you convinted her website which is Kathyichs dot com and
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that's Kathy with a k r ei CCHF dot com
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and you can also follow her on x and Instagram
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with a handle Kathy Reis or on Facebook at Kathy
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Reich's Books. So that's I to welcome Kathy to the show.
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Good day, Kathy, good day.
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Thank you for having me.
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You're very welcome. And I've been looking for I've been
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a bone fan for years, so I've been looking forward
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to this for a while. So let's start with your
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first book, Day's Death, published in nineteen ninety seven, which
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is quite a while back. But take us back to
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that time and tell us what were the circumstances that
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led you to that first publication.
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Oh my goodness, let's see you want you want to
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know the real story? Sure? Why?
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Now?
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Okay? Well, I was teaching full time university University of
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North Carolina at Charlotte, and I was commuting between Charlotte,
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North Carolina and Montreal, which is in Quebec, to do
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forensic caseworks. And it was a long commute, I had
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the mother load of air miles. But during the course,
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and I had a colleague at that time who published
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a book. On the side, she did a fiction work
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and she made a tidy little sum of money selling it.
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And I had three kids, and all three kids were
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I still have them. Actually, we're going to private universities,
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and private universities are very expensive in the United States.
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So I thought, well, okay, maybe I could make a
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little extra money writing a novel like my colleague had done.
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I had just worked on a serial murder case which
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had some very interesting elements involving dismemberment and various you know,
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analysis of at marks and saw marks. So I thought, okay,
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I'll do it. I'll give it a try. I'll you know,
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I didn't tell anyone I was writing it, because if
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you write a novel in the English department, you're a hero.
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If you write a novel in the science department, you're
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a little bit suspect. Anyway, I wrote it in secret
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before going on to campus. I'd get up at six
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in the morning and write for a couple of hours.
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And i'd write during the summer, and I write on
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weekends and vacations. So it took two years and I
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submitted that in nineteen ninety Sex And Yeah, the first
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house to which I submitted is bought the manuscript and
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the book came out in nineteen ninety seven.
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Wow, it's great to have your book accepted and Bumpistan
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the first go around. That's yeah, that's quite that's quite
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a statement.
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Yeah, well it's about publishing. So I just sent it
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in thinking, oh, yeah, they'll publish it's, you know, like
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they did my scientific books. That Yeah, it worked out
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that that's not the way to go about it.
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Yeah, I understand. So what inspired you to write this
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latest novel, Evil Bones?
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Part of it I was under contract. I owe the
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book to my publisher. Yeah. I'm always on the lookout
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for ideas, you know what what And in each of
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the books, I do a different you know, there's a
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main theme. There's Teference Brennan. She's a forensic anthropologist. Human
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remains are discovered in some compromised because they're burned, or
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they're mutilated or dismembered or you know, just bones perhaps,
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and she has to figure out a couple things. And
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this is I'm describing my own case work over the years.
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Who is this individual and what happened to them, what
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was the cause of death. So yeah, back at that time,
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I was thinking, well, maybe what I do is of interest.
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I could sense that forensic science was in the air.
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It was just beginning. CSI was just beginning, and bones
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was about anyway. So I thought, I'll I'll give it
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a try. I'll write a book, and i'll do it
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a secret. I'll spend two years doing it. I'll submit it.
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I think I said to myself fifty times. If I
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get fifty reject notes in letters, I I'll take that
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as a commentary on my writing skills and go back
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to my day job. And that's that's how I went
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about it.
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I bet you didn't expect it to be as longgoing
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or ongoing an interest in that particular in your writing.
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I just hoped that some publisher would want to publish it,
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and then that readers would like it, that someone would
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buy it and actually read the book and like the book.
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That was my main goal, the very humble goals back then.
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Oh absolutely.
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So.
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Now I've heard you refer to TV tenty and book tenty,
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So can you explain to the listeners what's the difference
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between the two.
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Yeah, somewhere along the way. What was it around nineteen
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I don't remember dates, but anyway, we were on air
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for twelve seasons, and I knew when I optioned the character,
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I knew that they would change the character a bit.
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I'd had a number of authors, none of which I
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really felt comfortable with. But when I met with part Hanson,
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who became our showrunner, and Barry Joseph said, we just
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we run the same page about what the show would be.
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That the character. I knew she'd be a little bit
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younger than I am. Turned out she's a bit taller
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than I am too. Emily Dachel was wonderful in the part.
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We both wanted to have humor. I have humor in
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my books, which is hard because you know, the subject
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is violent. Every book there's violent death. Same thing in
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the show. But to balance that was a sense of humor.
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We both thought that that was important. They were willing
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to respect, you know, you have to make some allowances
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for the magic of television, but they were going to
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respect the boundaries of the science as much as possible.
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So we were just all on the same page. So
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I agreed to option the character to them, and we
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went on air and went two thousand and five and
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then were on until twenty seventeen or something like that.
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I've watched, like I said, all of them. So now
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when it comes to the TV presentation, how does that
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differ from real life cases other than you know, finding
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the answers in an hour.
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Well, that's that's the main thing, is every single case
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gets solved. There may have been a couple that hung
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over from one episode or one season to the next.
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We had some arcing stories, but basically everything got solved,
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as you say, within forty eight minutes or fifty two
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minutes or whatever it is on commercial TV. But we
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tried to keep tried to keep everything reasonably accurate. All
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of the paraphernalia that you would see in the forensic platform,
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on the colect forensic platform, in the lab, at the
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autopsy room, you know, all that was real stuff. And
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the terminalology that we used, that the characters use was real.
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We obviously couldn't make things as graphic as might be
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the real situation at an actual autopsy, but we did
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some pretty graphic stuff.
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I would say, yeah, yeah, I had to turn. I
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had a couple of times during some of them I'm
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not one for medical kinds of displays on TV. Now,
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when it comes time to writing the book, how do
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you balance the, for lack of a better word, the
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entertainment part against the real forensic aspect.
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Well, the entertainment part, to me is the most important
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aspect because I'm writing novels, I'm writing fiction, and my
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readers they want to be entertained, they want to have
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a good story, they want to be challenged. I think
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when you're reading vast kind of forensic thriller, you try
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to figure it out before the author gives you the
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answer as part of the game. So I think they
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enjoy that. I like to keep them as realistic as possible,
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but without you know, crossing a line where it just
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becomes too graphic or too detailed.
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Yeah. Now, do you use actual I guess pieces from
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your real life forensic work as I guess inspiration or
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even as a component of the book.
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Yeah, some of the books are very closely based on Well,
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I shouldn't say that some of the books grew out
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of actual case work. The first book, Data Dad, grew
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out of a serial murder case. I worked in Montreal
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a serial murderer who was dismembering victims, and I was
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brought into the case in order to look the bones
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of one of the victims who'd been killed and buried
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two years earlier. I helped with the exhumation and then
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look at those cut marks to see what kind of tool?
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Was it? A saw? Was it? Was it a nice
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was it? You know? And asked, how was that? So? Yeah,
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So I used that experience directly and changed everything else,
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all the names and the dates and the places. But
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I use that tidbit. I take one core central idea
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from a space and then I asked myself, Okay, well
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what if this and what if that? What if that was?
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And then just spin it off into fiction.
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Yeah. Well, as an actual forensic anthropologist, you obviously will
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have an endless amount of material coming your way.
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Yeah. And I still, while I'm largely retired from practice,
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I still attend every I read the journal. The Journal
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Forensic Science JFS is our main professional journal, and it
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has not just centropology, but it has all of the
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specialty areas forensic dentistry, forensic pathology, forensic chemistry, you know,
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everything that's fire and arson whatever. So I get ideas
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from that, certainly, and I also attend the annual meeting
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of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and that's great.
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I go to all the different sections we have, I
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don't know, eleven sections for the specialty areas, and I
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attend presentations and talk to colleagues and that's great for
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getting ideas for stories that are you know, situations I
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wasn't directly involved in that. I have colleagues that were
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involved in.
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Now, during those kinds of gathering, do you have other
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peers kind of coming to you in wanting to explore
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the idea of publication novel I.
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Have had Yeah, I have had say well, you know,
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how did you go about this? How did you excuse me,
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how did you go about writing the book? And then
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how did you go about getting the book published? Yeah?
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Yeah, Well I would think, you know, when when they
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see the success that you've had, it can be entasty
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for for people. Yes, now you met you mentioned the
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as far as the role the Bones PV. And I
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noticed that you were also a producer on that. So
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tell me, you know, what was your experience as a producer.
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That has to be a very different role.
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Yeah, I was mostly a writing producer. I suppose just
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being on set and I wrote a number of episodes,
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and I would particularly have to be on set when
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my episodes were filming, so that if the actors had questions.
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Emily really really always wanted to get it right, and
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she always had lots of questions, I could be available
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to answer the questions, either as the director or the
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acts or you know, whoever needed additional information. Otherwise, I
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spent some time on set that most of my time
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in the writer's room. We did have a writer's room.
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We had a staff of I think we had seven
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full time writers, I can't remember. And then by guild law,
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you had regulations you had to keep I think three
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for what did they call it, There was a term
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for it, just just part time people that would write
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one individual.
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Okay, So now when it comes time to being connected
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to some of your real life forensic works, is there
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any any particular case or cases that really impacted you emotionally?
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Well, I think the hardest cases were the children, you know,
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whenever a remains were found. Yeah, that and it was
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the one time I think Also, there's a lot of
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black humor in the autopsy room. It's a tension reliever
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with the cops are standing around, and you know, ever
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happens to be standing around observing an autopsy. But the
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one time there was none, that was no humor was
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when it was a child. Yeah, those were the most
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heartbreaking cases.
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Yeah, I can't imagine. So I also noted that you
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worked on identifying some of the remains from nine to
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eleven ground zero. Tell us about that experience. That has
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to have been, you know, because the nation was focused on
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it as well.
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Yeah, and everybody wanted to do something. Everybody wanted to
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donate money or blood or shoes or sweatshirts or you know,
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whatever it was. So I was fortunate, I supposed, in
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being able to actually go to most partly I was
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at ground zero. Mostly the remains were being taken out
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to Staten Island Lab that had been set up out there,
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So mostly I was working out there and the remains
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would come to us and we would first of all
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determine if it was human or not human, because there
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were a lot of animal bones being found because there
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were restaurants and catering services that kind of thing in
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the in the twin towers. Yeah, and then when everything
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was between the crushing and the heat and the steam
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and everything. Everything was very very fragmentary. So we would
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determine if it was human, then we would assign it
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corner's case number and bag it and send it into
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the Medical Examiner facility and wash in the New York.
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When I look back at that particular period of time,
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to me, it just seems almost overwhelming. The tasks that
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people had to go through in order to help, you know,
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bring some closure to some family members.
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It was massive. And at first we worked twenty four hours.
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There were day shift and night shift, and I think
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eventually they moved for the arthropologists, at least they moved
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away from having a knight shift. But yeah, we were
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thirteen hour shifts and it was cold and the air
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was bad, and you had to wear all these you know,
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had masks year and yeah, it was not my favorite time.
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No, I can imagine. I can imagine. Now, you mentioned
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you were talking about having to identify human remains versus
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animal remains. Now, in the book Evil Bones, you talked
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about you know, mutilated animal souls, the ritual marquees and
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that kind of thing. So can you tell us a
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little bit about you know, the idea of killers ritualizing death,
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you know, making death be a part of some kind
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of belief system. Can you can you talk about you know,
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how you can either maybe understand you know, the killers
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kind of m o or maybe even help decode some
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of their actions.
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Yeah, My focus, and Tempe's focus, is really on physical evidence,
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her evidence something, and that's why I went into anthropology.
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In that psychology, I like some way and measure and photographs,
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and you know, it's the physical object. So I try
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not to get and I'm not qualified to get into
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questions of psychology or motivation, but you can't help wondering
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about it. How could somebody do this? Why would somebody
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do you know, torture animals or nail animal carcasses to
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trees or whatever bizarre which will behavior it happens to be,
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So you can't help wondering about that. And Tempy does certainly.
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And there is a forensic psychologist in the book, a
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new character that I've introduced that more directly addresses those questions.
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Oh that's a new to it. That's great. So it'll
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have people wondering in several different ways. So now the
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book title is Evil Bones, and you know the idea
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of evil can be. People will have a very subjective
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perception of what evil is. But you know, when it
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comes to that idea, how can you or how can
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one both recognize evil and put it aside? I mean,
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you know in a sense of you know that there's
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symbolism involved in it. To me it seems that it
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might be it might actually distort some of the work
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that's being done or even the public perceptions of what
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the actions work.
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Yeah, and that's one of the questions addresses that doesn't
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necessarily answer, is what is evil? What is truly evil?
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In its how that is defined varies from society to
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society and from time to time. And also how does
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society deal with evil? Then if you define something as
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you and I think everyone can agree that you know,
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evil is involved, you know, the torture, the killing of children,
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I think help that's recognized as evil. And also and
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to me, it's any vulnerable person that can't like animals
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and children. And that's what the focus of this story is.
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Okay, So now working with remains for as long as
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you have what what have you learned about just the
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idea of moral boundaries? You know? To memory?
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Well, again, I try not to get try to get
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into the head of the perpetrator. My job is I
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work with the victims, so I get remains in my
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lad My questions might be one of two. One is
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who is it ID? What can I reconstruct from the
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bones that can help figure out who this person is?
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And then the second question is, well, what happened to them?
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Either what's brought about death manner and positive death or
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what happened to them after death body treatment? What was
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done with the remains? Those are the main questions I
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addressed and answer them through the remains themselves.
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So is there another book under contract or otherwise in
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the world.
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Actually, this one was the last one for which I'm
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under contract, so we're talking about it, so we'll see.
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Okay, that's great. Well, do you have any maybe last
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words and of casting that you'd like to share with
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listeners about Evil Bones?
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Well? I hope they'll find it an engaging story. I
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think all their favorite characters are their Teppy of course,
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is there Ryan is their attempted's daughter. Is there? We
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meet some new characters, her great niece Ruthy. I think
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we met very briefly in a short story that I wrote,
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and I can't remember which one it was. It was
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in the Bone Collection of you know, four novellas that
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were published. I think it was called the Bone Collection anyway.
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So all of those characters are up here in this story,
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and I think it's one that they'll find engaging.
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Yeah. I read it and I find that I really
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couldn't put it down. You know. It was one of
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those that it was in a way having the TV
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you know, viewing viewership in a way kind of added
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a familiarity, you know, to the book characters, even though
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they're different, but there's there was that touch of the
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familiar with it. So I think that for me also
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made it more gaming. It was less of an effort
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to be able to identify and relate to the characters.
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Yeah, there differences, certainly. The TV show took place largely
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in Washington, DC. The other books take place in the
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Carolinas and in Montreal. But it's like there's just more
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of Tempy that we can enjoy, different aspects of Tempty
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that we can enjoy both TV Tempy and book Tempty.
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Absolutely well, Kathy, I really want to thank you for
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your time today and sharing with us about Evil Bones.
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I'm sure it will be another huge success like your
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other books, and thank you for your time.
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Thank you so much it was a pleasure.
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You're very welcome again everyone, Today my special guest has
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been Kathy Wright, author of the newly released Last Week
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Evil Bones, a Temperance Brendan novel. And again, for more information,
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you can visit her website which is Kathyreichs dot com
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and again you can follow her x and Instagram at
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the handle Kathy Reis or on Facebook at the handle
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Kathy Reich's Books. And everyone amst to thank you for
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joining us for this edition of the Bringing Inspiration to
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Earth's Show and remember to be a gripe of light
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by bringing inspiration to your world into the lines of
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those you touchs
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Good day everyone. Welcome to the Bringing Inspiration to Earth's show.
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00:00:05.559 --> 00:00:09.119
To find out more about our upcoming shows or access
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00:00:09.160 --> 00:00:13.759
to our more than sixteen hundred podcast episodes, visit our
4
00:00:13.759 --> 00:00:18.839
website at Byte Radio dot be. Today, my special guest
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is Kathy Reichs, author of Evil Bones, a Temperance Brennan novel.
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When an elderly woman crashes her car during a storm
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and swears she's seen a sign from Satan, Brennan is
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called to the scene and discovers a grotesque display a
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painted human like head nailed to a tree. Soon see
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on Earth, a string of similarly staged killings involving mutilated
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animal skulls, ritual markings, and a trail suggesting something far
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darker than local superstition. Kathy Reich's first novel, Days Dead,
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published in nineteen ninety seven, won an Ellis Award for
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Best First Novel and was an international bestseller. Evil Bones
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is Kathy's twenty fourth novel featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
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Kathy was also a producer of Fox Television's longest running
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scripted drama, Bones, which was based on her work and
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her novels. Kathy is one of very few forensic anthropologists
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certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. For more information,
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you convinted her website which is Kathyichs dot com and
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that's Kathy with a k r ei CCHF dot com
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and you can also follow her on x and Instagram
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with a handle Kathy Reis or on Facebook at Kathy
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Reich's Books. So that's I to welcome Kathy to the show.
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Good day, Kathy, good day.
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Thank you for having me.
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You're very welcome. And I've been looking for I've been
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a bone fan for years, so I've been looking forward
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to this for a while. So let's start with your
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first book, Day's Death, published in nineteen ninety seven, which
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is quite a while back. But take us back to
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that time and tell us what were the circumstances that
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led you to that first publication.
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Oh my goodness, let's see you want you want to
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know the real story? Sure? Why?
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Now?
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Okay? Well, I was teaching full time university University of
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North Carolina at Charlotte, and I was commuting between Charlotte,
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North Carolina and Montreal, which is in Quebec, to do
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forensic caseworks. And it was a long commute, I had
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the mother load of air miles. But during the course,
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and I had a colleague at that time who published
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a book. On the side, she did a fiction work
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and she made a tidy little sum of money selling it.
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And I had three kids, and all three kids were
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I still have them. Actually, we're going to private universities,
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and private universities are very expensive in the United States.
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So I thought, well, okay, maybe I could make a
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little extra money writing a novel like my colleague had done.
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I had just worked on a serial murder case which
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had some very interesting elements involving dismemberment and various you know,
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analysis of at marks and saw marks. So I thought, okay,
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I'll do it. I'll give it a try. I'll you know,
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I didn't tell anyone I was writing it, because if
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you write a novel in the English department, you're a hero.
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If you write a novel in the science department, you're
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a little bit suspect. Anyway, I wrote it in secret
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before going on to campus. I'd get up at six
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in the morning and write for a couple of hours.
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And i'd write during the summer, and I write on
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weekends and vacations. So it took two years and I
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submitted that in nineteen ninety Sex And Yeah, the first
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house to which I submitted is bought the manuscript and
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the book came out in nineteen ninety seven.
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Wow, it's great to have your book accepted and Bumpistan
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the first go around. That's yeah, that's quite that's quite
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a statement.
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Yeah, well it's about publishing. So I just sent it
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in thinking, oh, yeah, they'll publish it's, you know, like
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they did my scientific books. That Yeah, it worked out
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that that's not the way to go about it.
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Yeah, I understand. So what inspired you to write this
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latest novel, Evil Bones?
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Part of it I was under contract. I owe the
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book to my publisher. Yeah. I'm always on the lookout
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for ideas, you know what what And in each of
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the books, I do a different you know, there's a
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main theme. There's Teference Brennan. She's a forensic anthropologist. Human
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remains are discovered in some compromised because they're burned, or
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they're mutilated or dismembered or you know, just bones perhaps,
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and she has to figure out a couple things. And
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this is I'm describing my own case work over the years.
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Who is this individual and what happened to them, what
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was the cause of death. So yeah, back at that time,
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I was thinking, well, maybe what I do is of interest.
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I could sense that forensic science was in the air.
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It was just beginning. CSI was just beginning, and bones
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was about anyway. So I thought, I'll I'll give it
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a try. I'll write a book, and i'll do it
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a secret. I'll spend two years doing it. I'll submit it.
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I think I said to myself fifty times. If I
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get fifty reject notes in letters, I I'll take that
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as a commentary on my writing skills and go back
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to my day job. And that's that's how I went
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about it.
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I bet you didn't expect it to be as longgoing
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or ongoing an interest in that particular in your writing.
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I just hoped that some publisher would want to publish it,
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and then that readers would like it, that someone would
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buy it and actually read the book and like the book.
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That was my main goal, the very humble goals back then.
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Oh absolutely.
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So.
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Now I've heard you refer to TV tenty and book tenty,
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So can you explain to the listeners what's the difference
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between the two.
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Yeah, somewhere along the way. What was it around nineteen
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I don't remember dates, but anyway, we were on air
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for twelve seasons, and I knew when I optioned the character,
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I knew that they would change the character a bit.
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I'd had a number of authors, none of which I
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really felt comfortable with. But when I met with part Hanson,
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who became our showrunner, and Barry Joseph said, we just
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we run the same page about what the show would be.
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That the character. I knew she'd be a little bit
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younger than I am. Turned out she's a bit taller
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than I am too. Emily Dachel was wonderful in the part.
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We both wanted to have humor. I have humor in
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my books, which is hard because you know, the subject
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is violent. Every book there's violent death. Same thing in
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the show. But to balance that was a sense of humor.
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We both thought that that was important. They were willing
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to respect, you know, you have to make some allowances
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for the magic of television, but they were going to
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respect the boundaries of the science as much as possible.
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So we were just all on the same page. So
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I agreed to option the character to them, and we
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went on air and went two thousand and five and
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then were on until twenty seventeen or something like that.
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I've watched, like I said, all of them. So now
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when it comes to the TV presentation, how does that
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differ from real life cases other than you know, finding
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the answers in an hour.
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Well, that's that's the main thing, is every single case
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gets solved. There may have been a couple that hung
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over from one episode or one season to the next.
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We had some arcing stories, but basically everything got solved,
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as you say, within forty eight minutes or fifty two
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minutes or whatever it is on commercial TV. But we
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tried to keep tried to keep everything reasonably accurate. All
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of the paraphernalia that you would see in the forensic platform,
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on the colect forensic platform, in the lab, at the
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autopsy room, you know, all that was real stuff. And
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the terminalology that we used, that the characters use was real.
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We obviously couldn't make things as graphic as might be
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the real situation at an actual autopsy, but we did
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some pretty graphic stuff.
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I would say, yeah, yeah, I had to turn. I
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had a couple of times during some of them I'm
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not one for medical kinds of displays on TV. Now,
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when it comes time to writing the book, how do
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you balance the, for lack of a better word, the
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entertainment part against the real forensic aspect.
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Well, the entertainment part, to me is the most important
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aspect because I'm writing novels, I'm writing fiction, and my
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readers they want to be entertained, they want to have
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a good story, they want to be challenged. I think
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when you're reading vast kind of forensic thriller, you try
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to figure it out before the author gives you the
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answer as part of the game. So I think they
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enjoy that. I like to keep them as realistic as possible,
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but without you know, crossing a line where it just
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becomes too graphic or too detailed.
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Yeah. Now, do you use actual I guess pieces from
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your real life forensic work as I guess inspiration or
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even as a component of the book.
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Yeah, some of the books are very closely based on Well,
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I shouldn't say that some of the books grew out
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of actual case work. The first book, Data Dad, grew
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out of a serial murder case. I worked in Montreal
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a serial murderer who was dismembering victims, and I was
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brought into the case in order to look the bones
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of one of the victims who'd been killed and buried
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two years earlier. I helped with the exhumation and then
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look at those cut marks to see what kind of tool?
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Was it? A saw? Was it? Was it a nice
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was it? You know? And asked, how was that? So? Yeah,
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So I used that experience directly and changed everything else,
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all the names and the dates and the places. But
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I use that tidbit. I take one core central idea
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from a space and then I asked myself, Okay, well
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what if this and what if that? What if that was?
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And then just spin it off into fiction.
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Yeah. Well, as an actual forensic anthropologist, you obviously will
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have an endless amount of material coming your way.
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Yeah. And I still, while I'm largely retired from practice,
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I still attend every I read the journal. The Journal
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Forensic Science JFS is our main professional journal, and it
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has not just centropology, but it has all of the
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specialty areas forensic dentistry, forensic pathology, forensic chemistry, you know,
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everything that's fire and arson whatever. So I get ideas
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from that, certainly, and I also attend the annual meeting
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of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and that's great.
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I go to all the different sections we have, I
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don't know, eleven sections for the specialty areas, and I
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attend presentations and talk to colleagues and that's great for
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getting ideas for stories that are you know, situations I
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wasn't directly involved in that. I have colleagues that were
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involved in.
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Now, during those kinds of gathering, do you have other
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peers kind of coming to you in wanting to explore
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the idea of publication novel I.
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Have had Yeah, I have had say well, you know,
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how did you go about this? How did you excuse me,
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how did you go about writing the book? And then
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how did you go about getting the book published? Yeah?
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Yeah, Well I would think, you know, when when they
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see the success that you've had, it can be entasty
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for for people. Yes, now you met you mentioned the
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as far as the role the Bones PV. And I
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noticed that you were also a producer on that. So
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tell me, you know, what was your experience as a producer.
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That has to be a very different role.
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Yeah, I was mostly a writing producer. I suppose just
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being on set and I wrote a number of episodes,
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and I would particularly have to be on set when
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my episodes were filming, so that if the actors had questions.
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Emily really really always wanted to get it right, and
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she always had lots of questions, I could be available
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to answer the questions, either as the director or the
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acts or you know, whoever needed additional information. Otherwise, I
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spent some time on set that most of my time
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in the writer's room. We did have a writer's room.
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We had a staff of I think we had seven
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full time writers, I can't remember. And then by guild law,
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you had regulations you had to keep I think three
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for what did they call it, There was a term
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for it, just just part time people that would write
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one individual.
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Okay, So now when it comes time to being connected
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to some of your real life forensic works, is there
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any any particular case or cases that really impacted you emotionally?
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Well, I think the hardest cases were the children, you know,
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whenever a remains were found. Yeah, that and it was
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the one time I think Also, there's a lot of
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black humor in the autopsy room. It's a tension reliever
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with the cops are standing around, and you know, ever
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happens to be standing around observing an autopsy. But the
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one time there was none, that was no humor was
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when it was a child. Yeah, those were the most
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heartbreaking cases.
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Yeah, I can't imagine. So I also noted that you
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worked on identifying some of the remains from nine to
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eleven ground zero. Tell us about that experience. That has
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to have been, you know, because the nation was focused on
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it as well.
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Yeah, and everybody wanted to do something. Everybody wanted to
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donate money or blood or shoes or sweatshirts or you know,
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whatever it was. So I was fortunate, I supposed, in
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being able to actually go to most partly I was
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at ground zero. Mostly the remains were being taken out
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to Staten Island Lab that had been set up out there,
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So mostly I was working out there and the remains
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would come to us and we would first of all
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determine if it was human or not human, because there
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were a lot of animal bones being found because there
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were restaurants and catering services that kind of thing in
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the in the twin towers. Yeah, and then when everything
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was between the crushing and the heat and the steam
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and everything. Everything was very very fragmentary. So we would
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determine if it was human, then we would assign it
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corner's case number and bag it and send it into
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the Medical Examiner facility and wash in the New York.
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When I look back at that particular period of time,
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to me, it just seems almost overwhelming. The tasks that
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people had to go through in order to help, you know,
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bring some closure to some family members.
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It was massive. And at first we worked twenty four hours.
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There were day shift and night shift, and I think
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eventually they moved for the arthropologists, at least they moved
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away from having a knight shift. But yeah, we were
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thirteen hour shifts and it was cold and the air
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was bad, and you had to wear all these you know,
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had masks year and yeah, it was not my favorite time.
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No, I can imagine. I can imagine. Now, you mentioned
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you were talking about having to identify human remains versus
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animal remains. Now, in the book Evil Bones, you talked
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about you know, mutilated animal souls, the ritual marquees and
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that kind of thing. So can you tell us a
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little bit about you know, the idea of killers ritualizing death,
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you know, making death be a part of some kind
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of belief system. Can you can you talk about you know,
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how you can either maybe understand you know, the killers
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kind of m o or maybe even help decode some
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of their actions.
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Yeah, My focus, and Tempe's focus, is really on physical evidence,
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her evidence something, and that's why I went into anthropology.
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In that psychology, I like some way and measure and photographs,
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and you know, it's the physical object. So I try
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not to get and I'm not qualified to get into
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questions of psychology or motivation, but you can't help wondering
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about it. How could somebody do this? Why would somebody
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do you know, torture animals or nail animal carcasses to
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trees or whatever bizarre which will behavior it happens to be,
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So you can't help wondering about that. And Tempy does certainly.
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And there is a forensic psychologist in the book, a
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new character that I've introduced that more directly addresses those questions.
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Oh that's a new to it. That's great. So it'll
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have people wondering in several different ways. So now the
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book title is Evil Bones, and you know the idea
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of evil can be. People will have a very subjective
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perception of what evil is. But you know, when it
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comes to that idea, how can you or how can
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one both recognize evil and put it aside? I mean,
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you know in a sense of you know that there's
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symbolism involved in it. To me it seems that it
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might be it might actually distort some of the work
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that's being done or even the public perceptions of what
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the actions work.
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Yeah, and that's one of the questions addresses that doesn't
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necessarily answer, is what is evil? What is truly evil?
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In its how that is defined varies from society to
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society and from time to time. And also how does
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society deal with evil? Then if you define something as
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you and I think everyone can agree that you know,
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evil is involved, you know, the torture, the killing of children,
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I think help that's recognized as evil. And also and
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to me, it's any vulnerable person that can't like animals
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and children. And that's what the focus of this story is.
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Okay, So now working with remains for as long as
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you have what what have you learned about just the
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idea of moral boundaries? You know? To memory?
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Well, again, I try not to get try to get
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into the head of the perpetrator. My job is I
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work with the victims, so I get remains in my
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lad My questions might be one of two. One is
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who is it ID? What can I reconstruct from the
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bones that can help figure out who this person is?
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And then the second question is, well, what happened to them?
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Either what's brought about death manner and positive death or
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what happened to them after death body treatment? What was
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done with the remains? Those are the main questions I
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addressed and answer them through the remains themselves.
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So is there another book under contract or otherwise in
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the world.
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Actually, this one was the last one for which I'm
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under contract, so we're talking about it, so we'll see.
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Okay, that's great. Well, do you have any maybe last
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words and of casting that you'd like to share with
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listeners about Evil Bones?
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Well? I hope they'll find it an engaging story. I
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think all their favorite characters are their Teppy of course,
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is there Ryan is their attempted's daughter. Is there? We
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meet some new characters, her great niece Ruthy. I think
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we met very briefly in a short story that I wrote,
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and I can't remember which one it was. It was
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in the Bone Collection of you know, four novellas that
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were published. I think it was called the Bone Collection anyway.
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So all of those characters are up here in this story,
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and I think it's one that they'll find engaging.
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Yeah. I read it and I find that I really
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couldn't put it down. You know. It was one of
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those that it was in a way having the TV
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you know, viewing viewership in a way kind of added
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a familiarity, you know, to the book characters, even though
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they're different, but there's there was that touch of the
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familiar with it. So I think that for me also
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made it more gaming. It was less of an effort
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to be able to identify and relate to the characters.
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Yeah, there differences, certainly. The TV show took place largely
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in Washington, DC. The other books take place in the
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Carolinas and in Montreal. But it's like there's just more
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of Tempy that we can enjoy, different aspects of Tempty
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that we can enjoy both TV Tempy and book Tempty.
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Absolutely well, Kathy, I really want to thank you for
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your time today and sharing with us about Evil Bones.
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I'm sure it will be another huge success like your
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other books, and thank you for your time.
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Thank you so much it was a pleasure.
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You're very welcome again everyone, Today my special guest has
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been Kathy Wright, author of the newly released Last Week
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Evil Bones, a Temperance Brendan novel. And again, for more information,
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you can visit her website which is Kathyreichs dot com
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and again you can follow her x and Instagram at
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the handle Kathy Reis or on Facebook at the handle
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Kathy Reich's Books. And everyone amst to thank you for
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joining us for this edition of the Bringing Inspiration to
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Earth's Show and remember to be a gripe of light
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by bringing inspiration to your world into the lines of
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those you touchs
