Bone by Bone
Carol O'Connell
352 pp. Putnam. $24.95
Pub. Date: 12/30/2008
ISBN-13: 978-0399155147
Reviewed by Lindsay Stotts
What is every parent’s worst nightmare? Kids getting bad grades? They don’t make any friends? Not even close. Every parent’s worst nightmare is that their child will go out to play, and never come home. Now imagine that this actually happened, how could anything be worse than this? How about by having that missing child come home twenty years later…bone by bone. This is the setup behind Carol O’Connell’s latest thriller “Bone by Bone,” a wonderfully captivating tale filled with great characters and a clever and engaging mystery.
One day, the sons of Judge Henry Hobbs, Joshua and Oren, go out into the woods to play. That evening though Oren returns alone. Every available resident in the town of Coventry helps search the woods to find little Josh Hobbs, but strangely he is never located. The news ripples through the town like a shockwave. People warmly recollect their memories of Josh; Josh following them around with his camera and snapping candid pictures of the Coventry townsfolk. After a while, Josh’s older brother Oren is sent away from Coventry by his father. Not surprisingly, this incident only sparks more speculation and rumor-mongering among the nosy townspeople. What could be worse than having one of your sons disappear? How about having the other one accused of killing him.
Twenty years have passed and after receiving a letter from his father’s housekeeper, Hannah, which hints at his father’s ailing health, Oren returns to Coventry. When he arrives at his father’s door, he’s not only startled by the appearance of Hannah, but by what was left at the front door, namely a human bone. Discussing recent events with Hannah, Oren comes to shockingly discover that his brother has been coming home bone by bone for weeks now.
While the family now has confirmation that Joshua is dead, they must suddenly unravel the mystery of who found him, killed him and is now sending him back one bone at a time. Even though the town banded together twenty years earlier to find Josh, not all of them are totally clueless about what happened that fateful day. Oren becomes fixated on discovering who killed his brother and clearing his family. In the process, he discovers that everyone in town has their own dirty little secret to hide and his brother may have paid dearly for photographing some of them.
The story’s mystery arc is well-plotted and executed by a masterful hand, producing an extremely captivating read. Carol O’Connell does an excellent job of developing the back-story for all the characters, providing a depth to them that makes each character incredibly relatable to the reader. Her fine characterizations had me cheering for the protagonists and despising the villains, and are the reason the novel works so well. I empathized with Oren’s struggle to uncover the mystery of his brother’s disappearance and subsequent gruesome return. And even more, I was engaged by it.
The plot in “Bone by Bone” is intricate and shrewdly crafted. It contains many blind corners that I never saw coming. The narrative moves quickly, the mystery unfolding or complicating at a rapid pace. Dull moments won’t be found here. O’Connell sprinkles a little trail of breadcrumbs throughout the story to entice her audience, not enough to spoil the conclusion, but with enough substance to let the reader speculate on possible outcomes. The climax of the book did not disappoint, wrapping everything up beautifully in a stunning conclusion. The only drawback to the novel is that the extremely short story breaks felt schizophrenic since each one changed the focus to a different character. If anything, this made the story harder to follow and get into.
Last Word:
Despite a somewhat schizophrenic nature due to its rapid pacing and intricate storyline, “Bone by Bone” delivers a bucketful of thrills and chills. It’s a story that will pull at your heart strings, while at the same time making you seethe with anger at some of the characters. If you’re in the mood for a great mystery with tight plotting and great characterizations and will keep you captivated from the first page to the last, then Carol O’Connell’s “Bone by Bone” is a terrific choice.
Final Grade: 81 out of 100
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