But the hints of other crimes TempeвЂ™s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.вЂ™s splenetic outbursts. Heavner isnвЂ™t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. Nettled by several errors in HeavnerвЂ™s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her departmentвЂ™s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man.

ItвЂ™s not quite the tour de force that herВ Case HistoriesВ (2004) was, but this latest affords the happy sight of seeing Atkinson stretch out into speculative territory again.ДЄnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.ДЄ week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if itвЂ™s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been.

Provocative, entertaining and beautifully written. Besides, it affords several opportunities to do old Adolf in, what with his вЂњfunny little flap of the hand backward so that he looked as if he were cupping his ear to hear them betterвЂќ and all. In one moment, for example, the conversation turns to a child who has died reminds Ursula, our heroine, вЂњYour daughter.She fell in the fire,вЂќВ an event the childвЂ™s poor mother gainsays: вЂњ вЂI only ever had Derek,вЂ™ she concluded firmly.вЂќ Ah, but thereвЂ™s the rub with alternate realities, all of which, Atkinson suggests, can be folded up into the same life so that all are equally real. All these possibilities arise, and all take the story in different directions, as if to say: We scarcely know ourselves, so what do we know of the lives of those who came before us, including our own parents and-in this instance-our unconventional grandmother? And all these possibilities sometimes entwine, near to the point of confusion. Call it a more learned version of Groundhog Day, but that character can die at birth, or she can flourish and blossom she can be wealthy, or she can be a fugitive she can be the victim of rape, or she can choose her sexual destiny. But Atkinson isnвЂ™t being lazy, not in the least: Her protagonistвЂ™s encounter with der FГјhrer is just one of several possible futures. If you could travel back in time and kill Hitler, would you? Of course you would.ДЄtkinsonвЂ™s ( Started Early, Took My Dog, 2011, etc.) latest opens with that conceit, a hoary what-if of college dorm discussions and, for that matter, of other published yarns (including one, mutatis mutandis, by no less an eminence than George Steiner).

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