Second Forensics Mystery from Sara E. Johnson, THE BONES REMEMBER (New Zealand)

Ready for some armchair travel with a hint of JAWS? Sara E. Johnson provides the ride in her second New Zealand-set Alexa Glock Forensics Mystery, THE BONES REMEMBER. Once you discover, with this dauntless forensic investigator, the wilds of Stewart Island, you'll want more pages. And the shark attacks and treachery along the way will keep the pages turning.

Never heard of Stewart Island? It's not fictional -- it's the third largest land mass making up New Zealand, and it's challenging to get to and very, very cold even in summer. On the wild ferry ride, Glock's already coming to grips with the local controversy over "cage diving," a way to see sharks close up. It's not just the presence of tourists -- the 300-plus full-time locals are dependent on their money, anyway -- but the sharks get teased onto coming to the cages, through baiting that's just enough to leave them hungry, and some of the locals feel the sharks then become more dangerous for local divers and anglers.

Alexa is on assignment, her first time being sent a substantial distance by the Forensic Service Center in Auckland where she's managed to find work. An expert in the forensics of teeth, she'll have a chance to extend her experience to shark bites and related murders, starting with a body some distance into the extensive Department of Conservation lands. Is the death hunting related? Animal caused? The body's on a pile of kelp, and at first glance looks like a mutilated seal. Alexa asks the question pertinent to her examination:

"How much time do we have with the tide?"

 "Fifteen, twenty minutes."

The examination would need to be quick. Cause and time of death were her main goals. Massive tissue and blood loss, from the looks of it, for cause, and time of death? She looked for a watch on the victim's wrist. There was only one wrist left, and no watch—rarely was TOD that simple. Body temperature may have been influenced by water temperature. She gently lifted the man's right arm, noting rigor mortis was presnt. The man had been dead anywhere from six to forty-eight hours. It was a start, but she wondered how much of that time he'd been immerse or beached. Cold water would delay rigor mortis, so she guessed he had been beached for at least six hours. Probably washed up during the night.

She backed up and looked around, at the beach, at the bystanders watching, at the expanse of Pacific hiding the monster responsible for this carnage. She photographed the body from different angles. "Sketch the scene, please," she told Constable Kopae, who had joined them. A sketch would provide depth of field that photos couldn't.

 Wallace interrupted. "Can you tell if the bloke was Maori?"

That's an important question, but the answer will have to wait—pretty rough on the families waiting in the village for word of who this is. Meanwhile, a shark expert with his own show has arrived on the island, with his own agenda. And a different way of seeing things.

Duffy came close. "Mother of God." Against the white sheet, the plundered eye socket gaped like violent art. "The shark clamped the head in his jaws," Duffy said his voice so close Alexa could feel warm puffs. "It's called the killing bite. Then comes the lateral head-shake, which ruptures the neck. It's broken, yeah?'

She reached her hands under the paper cover and gently manipulated the spinal cord. Rag doll snapped, the image of a shark with a man's head clamped in its jaws, body whipping back and forth, flashed in her mind. The floor undulated. She grabbed the exam bed to keep from crumpling.

Johnson's abundant details of forensics, crime investigation, and New Zealand itself make her crime writing authoritative and intriguing. She leavens this with quick twists of plot and suspects, and a minor thread of romance, as Alexa ponders whether she wants a romantic connection with Detective Inspector Bruce Horne (see the first book in this series, Molten Mud Murder). When Horne takes over her island investigation, it's just in time to keep her from seriously overreaching her position. And that too is a pleasure -- that the many mistakes of amateur sleuths are replaced in Johnson's crime novels by expertise, eagerness, and racing forward.

Johnson steps carefully around potential issues of cultural appropriation; it would take the expert eye, of course, of a Maori reader to say whether she has fully avoided it, but casual readers will probably be comfortable with the distance she has selected for this New Zealand exploration.

The series is published by Poisoned Pen Press, a Sourcebooks imprint; add it to the TBR stack for enjoyable reading with a less common setting and a mostly sensible sleuth.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.