Flash and Bones - Kathy Reichs [92]
A beefy finger shot the air. “The fern business stays between you and me.”
I pantomimed a key on my lips.
“Don’t want people thinking I’m going all gooey.”
“Bad for the image.”
Slidell pulled an object from his pocket and tossed it to me.
“Galimore had that sent over to my office. Note said it was something you asked him for. Said he never had a chance to give it to you.”
The object in my lap was a NASCAR cap. On its bill was a signature scrawled in black Magic Marker. Jacques Villeneuve.
A grin tugged the corners of my mouth. Lieutenant-détective Andrew Ryan, quebec cop and Villeneuve groupie, would be thrilled.
“So.” Slidell straightened his phony cool-guy shades. “Erskine Slidell still your favorite badass?”
“Yes, Detective.” My grin widened. “You are still my favorite Charlotte badass.”
FROM THE FORENSIC FILES OF DR. KATHY REICHS
In this bonus Q & A, the scribe behind Tempe Brennan takes questions on NASCAR, extremist groups, Tempe’s love life, and the difference between writing a novel and penning a script for the TV show Bones on FOX.
1. Flash and Bones begins with the discovery of a body in a barrel of asphalt in a dump next to the Charlotte Motor Speedway, and characters from the racing world become implicated in the drama. What drew you to NASCAR as a backdrop? Are you yourself a racing fan?
Prior to writing Flash and Bones, I had only passing knowledge of auto racing, having attended one event way back in the gray dawn of history. But almost every Charlottean knows a player in the game—be it a team owner, a mechanic, a sponsor, or a driver. It’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement each May and October when hundreds of thousands converge on our burg for big races. Like Daytona or Darlington, Charlotte is an epicenter for the sport. And, as Tempe explains in the book, stock car racing originated with bootlegging in the Carolina mountains during Prohibition.
I ended up writing NASCAR into the novel because of my longtime friend Barry Byrd, himself a huge racing enthusiast. Each time I began a new Temperance Brennan novel Barry would suggest that NASCAR would provide a rich background for a story. I finally realized he was right. Barry offered to introduce me to Jimmy Johnson and his team, to take me to the track, to include me with the gang attending the All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600.
Barry followed through on his promises. I met track owners and managers, sports journalists, pit crew chiefs, and fans who had driven their Winnebagos from Portland, Houston, Teaneck, and Nashville. Thanks to Barry and the Smith family I enjoyed a top to bottom tour of the Charlotte Motor Speedway. My fascination with the adjacent landfill was, I fear, a source of some dismay.
2. Flash and Bones takes place entirely in Tempe Brennan’s hometown of Charlotte. Spider Bones, on the other hand, begins in Montreal, where Tempe occasionally works, then moves to Hawaii. Other books have taken Tempe to Chicago, Israel, and Guatemala. How do you decide where to set your next novel? In what city do you spend most of your own time these days?
Setting is a living, breathing part of each story I write. When Tempe travels, her destination is always a place that I know well, one in which I have plied my trade or spent time doing research.
I work and live in Charlotte, so Tempe does, too. Like her, I am a commuter, shifting regularly from North Carolina to Quebec, where I consult to the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale in Montreal. Yep. I have the mother lode of frequent flier miles.
In Spider Bones Tempe heads to Hawaii to pursue a case for JPAC, the Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command, the U.S. military facility dedicated to identifying the remains of servicemen and -women who have died far from home. Easy choice. I consulted for this lab for many years.
In Grave Secrets Tempe exhumes a mass grave in Guatemala. In the year 2000 I was invited to do the same by the Guatemalan Foundation for Forensic Anthropology.
In Bones to Ashes a case takes Tempe