Speaking in Bones

The novel follows forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan as she investigates a web of disappearances, murders, and religious fanaticism in the mountains of North Carolina.

Brennan, who consults for the Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner's Office (MCME) in Charlotte, receives an unexpected visitor: Hazel "Lucky" Strike, a 61-year-old websleuth who works online to match unidentified human remains with missing persons. Strike plays a disturbing audio recording of a young woman pleading for her life while two men abuse her, and claims the voice belongs to Cora Teague, an 18-year-old from Avery County who vanished in the summer of 2011. Cora's family never filed a missing person report, insisting she ran off with a boyfriend. Strike believes Brennan already has Cora's remains: a partial torso found in Burke County in 2013. She also found a key chain voice recorder near the recovery site but refuses to leave it with Brennan.

Brennan cancels a trip to visit Andrew Ryan, her longtime romantic partner and a Quebec homicide detective who has recently proposed marriage, and reexamines the remains. She finds no determinable gender, race, or cause of death. Her boss, chief medical examiner Tim Larabee, allows her to investigate further, though the Teague family refuses to provide DNA samples.

Brennan arranges to meet Strike at the Burke County overlook along with Deputy Zeb Ramsey of the Avery County Sheriff's Department and his cadaver dog, Gunner. The overlook is a viewing point for the Brown Mountain lights, unexplained illuminations observed in the area for centuries. Gunner alerts near a pine tree where Brennan discovers two partial fingertips preserved in hardened sap, along with additional hand bones. Back at the lab, the fingertip skin proves completely devoid of ridges. Research reveals that certain chemotherapy drugs can erase fingerprints, possibly connecting to Cora's reported health problems.

Brennan's mother, Katherine "Daisy" Brennan, a gifted researcher living at an upscale care facility while managing untreated cancer, discovers that body parts were found near a second Brown Mountain overlook. Only three such viewing points exist, and she urges Brennan to search the third, Wiseman's View. Ramsey also reveals that the doctor who treated Cora's younger brother Eli, who died at 12 from a traumatic head injury, had doubted the parents' account of a stair fall. At Wiseman's View, Brennan and Ramsey find a fragment of blue bucket and a mass of concrete. Brennan determines that someone placed a severed head inside the bucket and poured quick-setting concrete over it before throwing the bucket into the gorge. The concrete split on impact but retained a detailed impression of the victim's face. While they work, a boulder is deliberately dislodged from above, nearly killing them.

At the MCME, Brennan creates a cast from the concrete mold. The death mask reveals not Cora but Mason Gulley, a young man from Cora's church whom her father claims she ran off with. The identification rests on Naegeli-Franceschetti-Jadassohn (NFJ) syndrome, a rare genetic condition that causes spotted skin, brittle nails, dental abnormalities, and absence of fingerprints. Mason's teenage half-sister, Susan Grace Gulley, had secretly approached Brennan with a historic medical plate depicting their great-uncle Edward with the same condition. Susan Grace also revealed that Mason called her regularly from Tennessee during the summer of 2011 before going silent.

The investigation shifts when Strike is found bludgeoned to death at a Charlotte nature preserve. Detective Erskine "Skinny" Slidell of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) catches the case. Brennan suspects Wendell Clyde, a rival websleuth who feuded with Strike online, but Clyde's alibi holds.

Brennan and Ramsey confront the Teague family outside their church, the Jesus Lord Holiness, a Catholic splinter congregation led by Father Granger Hoke. Hoke confirms Mason stopped attending around September 2011, when a renovation involving concrete work concluded. Crime lab analysis of residue from the mold's interior identifies olive oil and frankincense, both materials used in exorcism rites. Brennan learns from Father James Morris, her mother's confessor, that Hoke was defrocked in 1998 for performing unauthorized exorcisms. Ramsey discovers that Hoke killed a nine-year-old girl with autism during an exorcism in Indiana; the death was ruled accidental.

Visiting former church member Katalin Brice in Asheville, Brennan learns that Katalin found a pillow in her infant son River's crib she never placed there; River died in Cora's care. Katalin's daughter Saffron reacts with terror at Cora's name: "Which one, Mommy? Which one?" Separately, Cora's physician, Dr. Terrence O'Tool, reveals he treated Cora for temporal lobe epilepsy, but her parents discontinued all medication and chose to address the condition themselves.

Brennan suspects Mason returned from Tennessee, obtained the recorder for Cora, and was killed during a botched exorcism or after Hoke discovered the device. She connects the dismemberment to the store of Cora's father, John Teague, where Cora's eldest brother, Owen Lee Teague, built concrete dog-kennel runs that same summer with readily available cement and tools.

Unable to reach Ramsey or Slidell, Brennan drives to the church alone. Hoke holds her at gunpoint and allows her to spray luminol, a chemical that reveals traces of blood, throughout the buildings; nothing fluoresces. In his rectory, she notices a calendar notation reading "SG" and fears Susan Grace may be Hoke's next target. When Hoke makes clear he will not release her, Brennan kicks the gun away and escapes.

Her subconscious later connects the remaining clues to the Teague store. Entering the kennel after hours, she finds a basement room with a bed, a crucifix, and a heavy chair fitted with leather restraints. Cora Teague is alive, terrified, and captive.

As Brennan coaxes Cora toward the door, the young woman's personality shifts. Her voice drops and she identifies herself as "Elizabeth," after Elizabeth Báthory, a 16th-century Hungarian countess infamous for serial murder. Brennan realizes Cora does not have epilepsy but dissociative identity disorder (DID), a condition in which extreme trauma causes a person's identity to fragment into distinct personalities. Saffron's terrified question referred not to which home Cora might visit but to which personality she would encounter. The violent alter, or alternate personality, attacks Brennan, fracturing her cheekbone. Brennan regains consciousness to find Cora restrained in the chair, Hoke bleeding from a crucifix wound, and Owen Lee on the phone. Ramsey and Slidell arrive and take Owen Lee into custody.

Over two weeks, investigators reconstruct the full story. Cora's dissociative episodes began around age 14, triggered by isolation and her father's fanaticism. Her violent alter killed Eli, River Brice, Mason, and Strike. Owen Lee covered for Cora each time, dismembering Mason and scattering the remains from the overlooks. Security footage places Cora in Strike's car near the preserve the Saturday before Strike's body was found; Strike had unknowingly brought Cora from the Teague home to Charlotte. Hoke survives and faces charges alongside the Teagues; Cora is declared mentally incompetent and committed to psychiatric care.

Ryan visits Charlotte, and the couple has a raw exchange about commitment and autonomy. Inspired by her mother's joyful new romance with a fellow patient, which prompts her mother to begin chemotherapy, Brennan overcomes her fear of commitment. She and Ryan plan a shared life, touring condos in Montreal. At Strike's funeral, roughly 50 fellow websleuths attend, and Clyde, Strike's rival, buys the headstone, engraved "Lucky to have known you."