Kathy Reichs's Biography

The TV series Bones, featuring heroine Temperance Brennan, was inspired by Kathy Reichs's life.

As a footnote, Kathy Reichs even has a three-line acting role in Bones. In an episode directed by David Duchovny, she plays a member of Zach Addy's dissertation committee.

Kathy Reichs is one the stars of the forensic science genre. Her first book Deja Dead became the biggest selling debut novel ever and won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel of 1997.

As well as writing fiction, Kathy Reichs is a forensic anthropologist with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina, and the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale in Quebec.

In The Scotsman's excellent profile of Kathy Reichs, Sandra Dick gives a flavour of Reichs's life and work:

"Away from the book tours, she [Reichs] may be found up to her elbows in putrefying remains, trudging through mass graves of murdered women and their young children slaughtered by death squads in Guatemala, unearthing Second World War victims or sifting through the rubble of Ground Zero, separating animal bones from human remains....

"It is a skill that has taken her from examining remains from the US Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to Rwanda, to testify in the UN genocide tribunal.

"She has examined ancient Egyptian mummies and held in her hands the Child of Taung, the fossilised infant skull found near Taung in South Africa and dated at about 2.5 million years old."