Review – The Bones Will Speak

A killer with a penchant for torture has taken notice of forensic expert Gwen Marcey . . . and her daughter.

When Gwen Marcey’s dog comes home with a human skull and then leads her to a cabin in the woods near her Montana home, she realizes there’s a serial killer in her community. And when she finds a tortured young girl clinging to life on the cabin floor, she knows this killer is a lunatic.

Yet what unsettles Gwen most is that the victim looks uncannily like her daughter.

The search for the torturer leads back in time to a neo-Nazi bombing in Washington state—a bombing with only one connection to Montana: Gwen. The group has a race-not-grace model of salvation . . . and they’ve marked Gwen as a race traitor.

When it becomes clear that the killer has a score to settle, Gwen finds herself in a battle against time. She will have to use all of her forensic skills to find the killer before he can carry out his threat to destroy her—and the only family she has left.

My take:

A forensic artist. A quirky heroine. A serial killer. All combine to make The Bones Will Speak equally as captivating as book one in author Carrie Stuart Parks’ Gwen Marcey Series.

To me, the joy of reading this series is wrapped up in the unique Gwen Marcey. Despite her unusual profession, she is a character that readers can relate to. She has an odd sense of humor, personal problems that the reader can sympathize with, and a unique profession that propels the stories forward. Her personal struggles make you root for her to overcome her problems and succeed, and you cheer as she makes a step forward in accepting her divorce and resulting life changes. When she had a vet emergency in this book and didn’t have the needed cash to pay the bill, I wanted to send money to Gwen to help her out. A perfect indicator that I was invested in this character.

In addition, with Parks profession as a forensic artist, you know details about being a forensic artist included in the books are accurate. This makes the books all the more interesting for me. Parks attention to detail is fabulous, and I love learning more about this unique profession. Also as a writer, I can appreciate Parks’ creative descriptions and the way she keeps the story from sagging in the middle and brings it to a satisfying conclusion leaving me wanting to read book three in the series. I do hope there is a book three planned!