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Sydney Fitzpatrick is an FBI special agent who is a highly-regarded forensic artist. At the moment, she is preparing to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with her family and is not particularly elated to be asked to do a rush job. However, since she was recommended by a close friend, she decides to accept the work. Little does she know that decision will lead to a series of murders and to a life-changing adventure that begins when she makes an identification of the young woman whose face was mutilated beyond recognition. Shortly thereafter, Sydney's friend is killed in a hit-and-run accident; and Sydney is dismissed from the investigation. She is driven to find answers about her friend's death, a query that leads her from Washington to Rome. She's formed a reluctant alliance with a man named Zachary Griffin who purports to be an agent himself. It appears that someone has begun to uncover a secret going back a few hundred years involving an ancient map, Freemason secrets and the Knights Templar. Together, Sydney and Zachary embark on a hair-raising adventure that leads them to the hidden chamber of a legendary tomb and facing danger on several different fronts. THE BONE CHAMBER is an extremely ambitious work. In addition to the murders that occur before and during Sydney's involvement, there are a lot of conspiracies that are revealed along the way - I found myself a bit lost because there were so many of them, each of which was quite complex. I was disappointed that Sydney only exhibited her forensic skills near the start of the book; after that, she became more of an investigator, although she did use her artistic skills for other purposes. Moving from uncovering identities to uncovering conspiracies was a bit of a stretch for me. Overall, I found that the book required a large suspension of disbelief. For one thing, Sydney and Zachary were able to find and follow clues that no one else had been able to decode in two hundred years. Every choice they made was the right one; in fact, they had only hours to unveil the ultimate treasure. There was also a sub-plot involving a group in Tunisia who blew up the bad guys' operation. Once that happened, there was no further connection to the ongoing events; I wondered why that was even included. However, if you are able to just let yourself go with the flow, you will find an exciting read ahead of you. Conspiracy thrillers of this sort are not my favorite kind of reading; however, I have to give Burcell a lot of credit for her meticulous research and development of a plot that incorporated a lot of emotional punch along with an action-packed denouement. Readers who are fans of quest books such as THE DA VINCI CODE will love this book—and find that it is far better written than many of the other books of this type.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, January 2010
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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