The Bones Will Speak - Book Rev # 5

THE BONES WILL SPEAK by Carrie Stuart Parks, Thomas Nelson publisher.

“Stop digging! Winston, NO!”

Gwen Marcey's Great Pyrenees dog raises his head; some kind of road kill lying at the side of the hole he is digging in her lawn. Seeing his mistress running toward him, he gleefully picks up the object and races off, enjoying his favorite game. Gwen finally coaxes the dog to bring it to her. The dirt and cow dung covering it had obscured its identity, but she now sees it is a human skull.

After reporting her dog's find to the County Sheriff's office, she sets out with Winston next morning to try and find where it had come from. A faint path leads to an old abandoned farmhouse a mile away. She discovers a creek bank where erosion has exposed several bones. As she examines the site, Winston emerges from the ramshackle farm house with a shoe with fresh blood on it. Gwen finds a girl's body inside the farmhouse. As she stoops to examine it, the body opens its eyes.

Another frantic call to the Sheriff's office, and the farmyard soon fills with police cars, ambulance, EMTs, and yellow crime tape. Author Carrie Stuart Parks, an FBI-trained forensic artist in real life, skillfully combines a police procedural account with an intense tale of terror in which the intended victims may be Gwen herself—and her fourteen-year-old daughter Aynslee.

Parks's crime novels present the reader with many threads to follow simultaneously, which of course can happen in real life, too. There is rivalry between the Ravalli County Sheriff, where the victim was found, and the Missoula, Montana city police, where the victim had been reported missing. 

Gwen is out of a job when Missoula police assign their own forensic consultant to the case. Police officers in both jurisdictions are under suspicion. Gwen also has child custody issues with her ex-husband. Her own daughter exhibits rebellion. And the anonymous master villain appears invincible and vicious, but who is he?

Christian crime novelists have a narrow wire on which to balance. Their publishers reject overt sex scenes and profanity, and so to entice an audience of thrill seekers, authors often emphasize violence—they may have as many murders as they like. In addition to Ms. Parks' skills in hand-writing analysis, manner-of-speaking evaluation, face reconstruction, wild animal behavior, and even scent detection, another hidden theme caught me by surprise at the story's end.

I look forward to her third novel in the Gwen Marcey trilogy.

Carrie Stuart Parks is an Idaho author as well as a widely renowned instructor in forensic art. She and her husband Rick reside in Kootenai County, Idaho.