The Bones She Buried

“A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller”


Nah, it's not, just joking. This is just an annoying trend (lately?) to add such marketing bullshit to the title of any books feared not to sell otherwise – or so it seems.

“The Bones She Buried” is, of course, neither completely gripping nor, fortunately, heart-stopping. It's pretty much a bog-standard police procedural featuring Josie Quinn, a thirty-something (I guess?) police detective in Pennsylvania (which doesn't matter at all because the setting is usually completely generic), who is investigating for the fifth time now with the usual staff who, so far, “covered cases so shocking and high-profile, they'd made national news.”

And, of course, Josie will eventually “[unravel] a scandal so massive and so complex that it's still sending shockwaves through not just the region but the entire nation.” And it all starts with the murder of someone close to her.

Honestly, all that thickly-applied pathos is not even necessary: Sure, Lisa Regan (whose surname I tend to “prominently” misspell) will never become a new Hemingway or Shakespeare. That's just fine, though, because the “absolutely unputdownable” “crime thrillers” she writes as if there was no tomorrow, are entertaining, well-paced, sometimes amusing, and always suspenseful.

Compared to many other books, this is fastfood – best devoured quickly and in secret, feeling slightly guilty over the wasted hours but, ultimately, happy to have read something that entertained me without taxing me.

Well, at times things do get a bit... complex:

“Josie's ex-fiancé, Luke Creighton's sister had a farm up in Sullivan County, so Josie had been there before.”

Such things happen if you mass-produce like Regan (but at least I don't have to wait long for each new instalment):



Vanishing Girls: A totally heart-stopping crime thriller (Detective Josie Quinn Book 1) Jan 17, 2018

The Girl With No Name: Absolutely gripping mystery and suspense (Detective Josie Quinn Book 2) Apr 19, 2018

Her Mother's Grave: Absolutely gripping crime fiction with unputdownable mystery and suspense (Detective Josie Quinn Book 3) Jul 19, 2018

Her Final Confession: An absolutely addictive crime fiction novel (Detective Josie Quinn Book 4) Nov 28, 2018

The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller (Detective Josie Quinn Book 5) Mar 27, 2019



So, if you can enjoy a run-of-the-mill police procedural, you can't go wrong with Lisa Regan.