I picked this up from our local library book sale a few months ago.  It was published in 2005.  It is a thriller set in New Orleans, Louisiana and Natchez, Mississippi. The type story as well as the setting immediately appealed to me since I live within a few hours drive of New Orleans and I love, love that city. Natchez is also a lovely, southern town. The racism in the story is a bit unsettling but it’s definitely true to some areas of the south—I’m not proud of that, but facts are facts. We do seem to have a lot of people who are unkind to others down here based solely on their skin color. I hate it and it makes me uncomfortable reading some of the language used.

The book itself is very intriguing. The premise is great with the heroine having a unique job as a forensic odonatologist. She inspects bite marks for criminal cases and I love that as a career choice for a character. I wasn’t sure I was going to like her from the blurb of the book since she is involved in an affair with a married man. Not only that, she and he jeopardize their careers with working together on various cases where she is not hired on officially as a consultant. He is a homicide detective who brings her into cases to help him look good as she has a good eye for details. She is also a functioning alcoholic. She has a family full of secrets. Her father was murdered when she was a small child.

I did end up liking her. The author piled on the trauma with this gal. She was messed up and even though she put on an appearance of being strong, she was an absolute mess.

As the story progresses, we learn exactly why she is a mess. It’s truly a miracle she wasn’t in a padded room of some sort with all that happened in her life.

The story is good. Complex and satisfying. She grows and learns and her character arc is well done. She makes some bone-headed moves a few times in the story and so does her homicide detective lover, but overall, it was an excellent read. It’s close to five-hundred pages, but it is really a pretty quick read with the page-turning plot.