Nick is called to New Orleans after hurricane Katrina hits as part of the DMORT team to recover bodies from the storm. Working with FEMA, DEA, & the National Guard the mantra of 1st the dead is changed to 1st the living. Not used to recovering people alive, Nick has a hard time dealing with survivors. Along the way, he comes across a dead body that forensically was killed before the hurricane hit & the storm is being used to cover up more murders. Being told not to investigate & leave the dead bodies, Nick still continues his quest to link the murders & is stopped at every avenue, shot at, & followed by DEA, NOPD, & his psychiatrist. Determined to get to the bottom things may prove to be deadly. Another great mystery and interesting forensic facts. ( )

The readers always knows who the bad guys are, but you have to read the book to find out how it all ends. ( )

This addition to the "Bug Man" series packs an emotional punch. Nick and many, many others respond to the tragedy of Katrina and the horrors that unfolded in New Orleans after the hurricane struck. Working with a group of people called DMORT, a rapid response group that goes to national tragedies to help with the recovery and identification of the dead. DMORT is normally concerned only with the dead but this time they are charged with rescue first, then later they will start to collect the bodies. For Nick this is a huge problem. His main concern is the dead and the bugs that can determine the time of death. When left in the "toxic stew" that is New Orleans all forensic evidence is being destroyed. When Nick finds bodies that are much more advanced than they should be just a day after the hurricane, he believes that someone is using the tragedy to cover up their murders and he is determined to prove it.

As usual, Nick ignores orders, does his own investigations and gets himself in trouble with the brass. There are a couple of relationships that emerge for Nick, a young homeless boy searching for his father and the DMORT psychiatrist who is charged with the teams mental health. Both have an impact on Nick that make him more human and less "bug like".

I had a hard time with a lot of the scenes in this one, mostly because the destruction of New Orleans hurt so badly the first time and I wasn't ready to deal with it again. Still, I trusted Downs to handle it well and I was right. Beautifully written it describes the despair and well as the hope that emerged from the tragedy of Katrina. Not an easy feat when dealing with such an emotional topic and one that isn't that far in the past.

I'll be reading more in this series. ( )

I gotta say that I did not like the first 50 pages or so. It was like reading a Clancey book, mostly infrastructure detail on the government agencies involved. I find that boring. However I persisted and about the middle of the book I could not put it down. I liked the plot development...I liked the characters especially Nick and his sarcasm, T.J. and his attitude and others. A good read for my second book by Downs. I will continue reading with more in future. ( )

A wonderful book, especially for fans of Gus Grissom’s character in the original CSI. Downs, characterized as a Christian author, writes a straight-forward and exciting forensic thriller. Forensic entomologist Nick Polchak is a driven, emotionally distant intellectual, who wears coke bottom bottle glasses and likes to work 20 hours a day. His encyclopedic knowledge of the insect world is balanced by his seeming immunity to the softer side of life, and his near inability to connect emotionally to others. In this, the third book of “the Bug Man” series, Nick stands in as foster father to a boy orphaned by Hurricane Katrina, and in the process gives readers a first-hand view of the first devastating days after that catastrophic storm. Most interesting to me was the author’s afterward, in which he notes that his characters fall victim to the same out-of-control rumors that spread throughout the entire country in those first hectic days after the storm made landfall. In this author’s note, though, Downs sets the record straight about the actual number of deaths in the Superdome, and corrects the record about the NOPD officers who did not report for duty in the aftermath of Katrina (15% as opposed to the rumors of 50%).
A terrific read – and it wasn’t until I finished the book that I figured out why the book jacket included the descriptor “Christian” – there is a refreshing absence of the more common four letter profanities in the dialogue. This did not detract from the book’s verisimilitude one bit – each character still spoke in a distinctive “voice” and each was clearly and individually drawn. Highly recommended. ( )