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 medecine legale.
But Tempe’s involvement in cases takes her beyond the lab, much more so than mine ever has. This is true in
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
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
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.
