Real-life Bones does it again
Bestselling writer and forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs credits the O.J. Simpson trial as the moment her vocation was pulled out of the lab and into the limelight.
"My colleagues and I worked in our labs for years and no one paid any attention to us and now all of a sudden we're hot," Reichs said in an interview Monday with CBC's Q cultural affairs show.
"People heard about blood spatter analysis and stab wounds trajectory and DNA and I think people became curious about it. It seems to me if you look at when the TV shows came on and when I was starting to write my first book Deja Dead, it kind of built from that point."
Reichs, who splits her time between Quebec and North Carolina, has contributed to the public taste for forensics.
Since Deja Dead was published in 1997, Reichs has written another 11 novels about forensic crime investigation, with her latest book, 206 Bones — the title is a reference to the number of bones in a human body — to be released Tuesday.
She's also a producer and consultant on the TV series Bones, which stars Emily Deschanel as Dr. Temperance (Bones) Brennan, the crime-solving forensic anthropologist who is the main character in her books.
"There are two Tempes. I think of TV Tempe and book Tempe and I think the book Tempe's personality mirrors mine a little more closely," says Reichs, who admits she modeled the forensic anthropologist character on herself.
"The TV Tempe I think of as a 'prequel.' She's at a younger point in her life, so she's a little bit less polished in her people skills."
Like Reichs, book Tempe works in Montreal and North Carolina. But the team of experts that surround the main character on Bones is a little different from Reichs's normal working life.
"The lab in Montreal is a combined medical-legal lab and crime lab so I don't have a team like Tempe does," she said. Reichs is the only forensic anthropologist working out of Quebec.
"I have good technicians who help me out, but I work in close collaboration with a forensic dentist and forensic pathologist. If you need consulting in fibre analysis or DNA or biology, they're right there under the same roof."
Reichs is critical of some of the crime scene investigation shows she sees on air, saying they show technologies that don't exist and often exaggerate the speed at which results can be obtained.
They also create unrealistic expectations among juries, she said.
"Juries think that we're going to get some relevant bit of arcane forensic science in every single case and that's not always true," Reichs said.
"The upside is that juries are aware of science and the powers of science and the other good thing is kids are excited about science."
206 Bones has Tempe Brennan in Chicago and surrounded by an extended Latvian family connected to her ex-husband.
She also matches wits with another scientist, whose conclusions about a series of murders end up doing damage to the families of the victims.
"The newest book looks at the question of legitimate forensic science and who is a legitimate forensic scientist and what damage can be caused by a rogue forensic scientist or an incompetent one," Reichs said.
Mistakes happen all the time, especially in a new and evolving field such as forensics, she said. However she is keen to have the most accurate picture of the science before the public that she can.
Reichs said she had a "gratifying" experience with the publication of her 2007 book, Bones to Ashes, set in an Acadian community in New Brunswick.
"Part of what gave me the idea for that story was a little child's skeleton that I had in my lab from 1990 until the book was published in 2007," she said. "As a result of that, we got someone calling in and we got new information and we got this little child identified after all those years."