Kathy Reichs talks about her cases, the inspiration for Devil Bones, the difference between the real Kathy Reichs and Temperance Brennan, and the television show Bones.

Q: Is Devil Bones based on a real case?

A: Strange things arrive at my lab. I’ve been asked to examine shrunken heads to determine their authenticity. Often they’re actually the skulls of birds or dogs.

Sometimes human skulls do show up. Some are painted or decorated. Some show carbonization from candle flames. Some are covered with melted wax, blood, and/or bird feathers.

These skulls turn out to be ritual objects. They’ve graced altars or been used in spells or religious ceremonies. I’ve worked on a number of these cases and, each time, the situation got me thinking about fringe religions, belief systems that mystify or alienate the larger population.

Devil Bones is based on a mélange of cases over a long period of time, cases that sparked my imagination. Some were my own. Some were described to me by colleagues. Some were discussed in the forensic literature or in scientific sessions at professional meetings.

Q: How did you go about researching Devil Bones?

A: About twenty years ago, at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, I heard a paper delivered by a pathologist who worked at the Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office in Miami, Florida. His research focused on a fringe religion known as Santería.

Santería is a syncretic religion resulting from the blending of African religious practices with Catholicism. The movement emerged during the period when slaves were brought to North America and forbidden the right to follow their ancestral beliefs. As a means of survival, the traditional African deities came to be disguised as Catholic saints. I remembered the paper and tracked it down. Then I became curious about other so-called fringe religions. A McGill University colleague had told me about a graduate student who worked as a cook at a Wiccan summer camp. Initially through her I began to research Wiccan practice and philosophy.

So the research went from lab to colleagues to literature to practitioners. During that progression I met many fascinating individuals and learned a great deal about religions that hadn’t been on my radar.

Q: How did you choose to write about police officers losing their lives in the line of duty?

A: Sadly, this part of the novel was inspired by events in my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. On April 1, 2007, Police Officer Sean Clark and Police Officer Jeff Shelton responded to a disturbance call in an East Charlotte housing complex. They had resolved the disturbance and were leaving when they engaged in conversation with a man uninvolved in the incident. As they turned to walk away, the man pulled out a gun and shot both officers in the back.

This incident had a huge impact on our community. I was in the early stages of writing Devil Bones when this happened and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I decided to incorporate a police shooting into the story. Devil Bones is dedicated to all who have lost their lives protecting the citizens of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina.

Q: How do you manage to balance your life as a bestselling writer with the demands of your forensic work and now with your work on the Fox series Bones?

A: It takes a good calendar. If I didn’t put everything onto my computer and BlackBerry, I think I’d probably be AWOL for half of the things I’m supposed to do.

It also takes discipline. I work a three-point triangle: Charlotte, North Carolina, where I live and do most writing; Montreal, Quebec, where I do casework for the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médicine légale (I’m also on the Canadian National Police Services Advisory Board); Los Angeles, California, where Bones is filmed (I am also a producer of the show).

Any time I’m not traveling—for book promotion or public speaking, for casework or testimony, for TV production—I write all day. I try to begin by eight in the morning and stay with it until five in the afternoon, or longer. If I’ve got free time, I write.

Q: How has it felt to see your principal character realized in the television series Bones? How involved are you in the production of the series?

A: The only way I can sum up working on the television series Bones is to say that it’s been a barrel of fun. Of course, I had some concerns at the outset. What would become of my character? How old would she be? Who would be cast in the role?

I met with Barry Josephson and Hart Hanson, now two of our three executive producers, before any deal was made. Barry and Hart assured me they would keep Tempe a realistic age and keep the science honest. They convinced me that they genuinely desired my input.

I work on each episode, primarily assisting staff writers. They develop each script as an original story. They come to me with questions concerning the science and I offer suggestions. I read each script when it is finished and send my comments to the other producers and the writers.

Periodically I do go to L.A. and hang around the set with Emily Deschanel, who plays Tempe, and with the producers, the writers, the props people.

I think of Bones as taking place in the years prior to Tempe’s arrival in Montreal, before she meets Andrew Ryan. TV Tempe works in Washington, D.C., which is where I started my career. The first skeleton I ever handled was at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in D.C. The Jeffersonian in Bones is a thinly veiled copy of that institution.

I’m thrilled with the acting on the show. Emily Deschanel does a fantastic job as the younger version of Temperance Brennan. And David Boreanaz is, well? What need one say? Michaela, Tamara, Eric, and TJ are terrific. In sum, I think the show has turned out splendidly. And grows better each season.

Q: Which is your favorite of all the Temperance Brennan books? Which did you most enjoy writing?

A: One of my favorites will always be Déjà Dead. Déjà Dead was the first. The adventure of being a novelist was all very new and exciting and I was totally naive about how publishing works. And of course, there was the success that Déjà Dead enjoyed. And continues to enjoy.

I enjoyed researching Cross Bones tremendously. I went to Israel with Dr. James Tabor, a colleague and biblical archaeologist with a great deal of experience in the Holy Land. He and I crawled around in tombs, visited archaeological sites, consulted antiquities dealers, and met with Israeli National Police and Hebrew University forensic scientists.

Another of my favorites is Monday Mourning. This plot derived from a Montreal case involving skeletal remains found in the basement of a pizza parlor. In the real case the key question was PMI, postmortem interval. How long had the three individuals been in that basement?

Though the novel spins off into completely different territory, PMI came to be the central question in Monday Mourning as well. I like the fact that fiction and reality started out so similarly, and that, in both the book and the real world, the cases were resolved successfully.

Q: How far do you identify personally with Tempe?

A: When I started these books I had no training in writing. It was a given from the outset that my main character would be based on me—a subject I might know something about.

I place Tempe in contexts with which I am familiar and comfortable. Certainly, professionally, I identify with her. In the books she’s a bit younger than I am. In the TV series she’s a lot younger than I am! Book Tempe is fortysomething and works in a crime lab almost identical to mine, the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale.

But Tempe’s involvement in cases takes her beyond the lab, much more so than mine ever has. This is true in Bones, also. Tempe goes out with detectives, interviews witnesses, and pursues cases from an investigative point of view. I don’t do that. My work is pretty much restricted to scene recovery, lab analysis, and court testimony. I have a little trouble with some of the impetuous things Tempe did in early books—digging up bodies and confronting victim associates and family members on her own. I would never do that.

When I created Tempe I wanted her to have flaws, to be imperfect, approachable, someone with whom the reader could identify. Tempe has problems, but problems that she’s handling. Her alcoholism. Her family life. Her relationship with Andrew Ryan. Those issues belong strictly to her.

When I started writing the books it was important to me to put humor into them. We also work hard to put humor into the television series. That’s an interesting balancing act. Each episode deals with death, and it’s a challenge to insert humor into that context without being disrespectful.

I think Tempe’s sense of humor reflects my own. Friends tell me that when reading the dialogue they hear my voice quipping the wisecracks.

Q: What is it like to work with human remains on a daily basis? Are you squeamish?

A: Working in a medico-legal lab you get habituated to what’s happening around you. You get used to the sounds and the smells and the sights of death. That doesn’t mean you grow immune to it.

Obviously my line of work is not for the squeamish. Archaeologists and physical anthropologists work on nice dry bone. Forensic anthropologists get involved in soft-tissue cases. Cases arriving at my lab for autopsy are homicide, suicide, and accident victims, people who have suffered violent deaths. Forensic anthropologists tend to get the most severe cases, the ones that can’t be resolved by the pathologist through a normal autopsy. Our cases are the putrefied, burned, mummified, mutilated, dismembered, and skeletal.

What I always keep in mind, though, is that I work with the dead, but for the living. I work to help families when someone has gone missing. I testify in court to bring justice if there has been a violent crime.

Q: This is now your eleventh Temperance Brennan novel. How do you keep them fresh?

A: I think the thing that gives my stories freshness is what gives them authenticity: the fact that I work in a medico-legal lab. I’m around forensics all the time. Cases are constantly coming in. There’s never any end to inspiration.

Each of my books is based loosely on a case that I’ve worked on or an experience that I’ve had. I never use exact details. I change the names, the dates, the places. I take the kernel of a scenario at the lab—unidentifiable body part found at a crash site, trash-bagged remains of endangered species—then spin off into a series of what-ifs.

What motivates me to stick with the same character is that she seems to have such resonance with readers. People genuinely like Temperance Brennan. The books are now printed in more than thirty languages. So the old gal has global appeal.

Q: Where/what next for Tempe Brennan?

A: The book I’m working on now starts out in Chicago. Tempe and Ryan (concerning whom she is still sorting out her feelings) have been asked to transport remains from the LSJML/Quebec Coroner’s Office to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. While there, Tempe is faced with a disturbing discovery.

I was born in the Windy City and return each year to visit family. My family is large, Irish, extended. My husband’s is large, Latvian, extended.

While in Chicago, Tempe also visits family so readers finally meet members of the Petersons clan. The action then moves to Montreal. Problems at the lab. Problems with LaManche. Problems with her car. Problems with Ryan. Oh, my.