Kathy Reichs

Kathleen Joan "Kathy" Reichs, born in Chicago in 1948, is an American forensic anthropologist and crime writer. She is best known for her series of novels featuring Temperance "Tempe" Brennan, and for the television show that took its inspiration from her life and books. Her importance lies both in her professional work and in how she has brought forensic science into fiction without sacrificing accuracy.

She trained in the United States, earning a bachelor's degree in anthropology from American University in 1971 and a PhD in physical anthropology from Northwestern University in 1975. She has taught at several universities across North America and is now professor emerita at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her field work has included consulting for a medical examiner's office, helping with an exhumation in Guatemala and serving with a team that responded to the World Trade Center disaster. She has also testified before the United Nations tribunal for Rwanda.

Her first novel, Déjà Dead, won the 1997 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel. From there she built a series around Brennan, a forensic anthropologist much like her creator, though with a different personal life. Each book closes its own case, but supporting characters and Brennan's past recur from one volume to the next.

Her style rests on scientific precision and a realistic tone that feels closer to the lab than to action. Besides the main series, she has co-written with her son Brendan the young adult Virals books and published several shorter stories. Her novels have been translated into many languages, and the television series Bones, which premiered in 2005, took her life and character as a starting point, though it departs from the books in most other respects.