The focus of my blog is to review book Series and not individual novels. But writers are going to continue writing novels within a series even after I have done my review, so I plan on reviewing the individual novels as they come into circulation.  Jenn J. Danna has recently added book #5, Lament the Common Bones to the Abbott and Lowell series.

Jenn J. Danna along with co-writer Ann Vanderlaan have released the fifth and most likely the last in the Abbott and Lowell forensic mystery series. I say the last in the series because the authors have moved onto a new FBI-K9 series publishing under the pseudonym Sara Driscoll and also because of issues with their publishers.  As Bill Maher would say, ‘I don’t know it for a fact..I just know it is true’ that this is the last book in the series. But perhaps the authors will prove me wrong and have something planned in the future.

There are two running storylines in Lament the Common Bones which one of them has been continuous throughout the series and has finally reached its conclusion. One of the main characters, Leigh Abbott, is a cop and also a daughter of a cop that had been murdered with evidence that he was corrupt. In her heart, Abbott knows that her father was a good cop and hopes to prove that he is innocent of the charges made against him. As the series has progressed, information trickled out indicating that there was more going on behind Nate Abbott’s murder. What Leigh finally uncovers will shock the entire police department.

The other storyline involves the other main character of the series, forensic anthropologist Matt Lowell and his graduate students at Boston University. One of Lowell’s graduate students is visiting a fellow student at their lab at Harvard University when she discovers that one of the teaching skeletons has indications that the living counterpart to it had been murdered. The head of the Harvard laboratory is Trevor Sharpe, an academic rival of Matt Lowell. I graduated from Boston University, and I know for a fact that some of the BU faculty have a certain animosity towards some of the Harvard faculty. So I had to give a chuckle when Matt Lowell had an opportunity to ‘stick it’ to the uppity Hahvid professor.

The Abbott and Lowell series is entertaining and quite informational with a good dose of forensic science with Lament the Common Bones being a fine addition to the series. Though it could be read without reading the rest of the series, it would be beneficial to get more background on the Nate Abbott murder storyline from the previous books. I hope I am wrong about it being the last in the series because I do enjoy this sleuthing duo.

To learn more about the series check out the Abbott and Lowell series.