Deja Dead -- Kathy Reichs
In my search for a new forensic detective series to read, it was inevitable that I'd come across Kathy Reichs. She's a real-life forensic anthropologist, so one would think that even though it's fiction, she's writing at least partially from experience. Which is slightly frightening--but also bizarrely fascinating, if you go for that sort of thing.
I knew going into it that it wasn't going to be exactly what I'm looking for (I want historical forensic anthropology--finding old bodies, or going over old unsolved mysteries), but it didn't stop me from (pretty much) completely enjoying myself:
Next, I placed the arms to the sides and the legs below. The limbs hadn't been exposed to sunlight, and weren't as desiccated as the chest and abdomen. They retained large portions of putrefied soft tissue. I tried to ignore the seething blanket of pale yellow that made a languid, wavelike retreat from the surface of each limb as I withdrew it from the body bag. Maggots will abandon a corpse when exposed to light. They were dropping from the body to the table, from the table to the floor, in a slow but steady drizzle.
EEEW!! There are a lot of mega-ick moments in the book, both because of maggot-y type stuff and because of pure gruesome-ness.
My major complaint about the book wasn't really all that major--I hated the main character's best friend. A lot. And I don't think that I was supposed to. But I'm not too worried about her showing up in the next book, if you know what I mean.