IN Kathy Reichs’ 13th Temperance Brennan novel, the forensic anthropologist is called to the scene of what appears to be an autoerotic death.

Nothing extraordinary in Tempe’s world of dead bodies, except that the victim is identified as a soldier who died in a helicopter crash 40 years before.

This leads to the exhumation of the body in the soldier’s grave and the hunt to identify it, which takes Tempe to Hawaii and another investigation into who killed the young men whose body parts have floated onto a popular beach.

You always learn a lot about the human body, decomposition and bugs when you read Reichs’ novels – she is a world-class forensic anthropologist – and this one’s no different.

The level of decomposition of a buried body, for instance, depends on the type of coffin used and whether air can circulate around it.

Not for the squeamish, but fascinating stuff.

Hannah Stephenson