Why is North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper messing around with political hacks as he tries to find someone with the guts and know-how to get the SBI crime lab back on the straight and narrow. There’s one very obvious choice for the job, and Cooper apparently hasn’t even considered her. I’m talking about Kathy Reichs, author of the successful Temperance Brennan series of books, which inspired the equally successful “BONES” television series.

There is no question her CV is up to snuff:

For years she consulted to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina, and continues to do so for the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Québec. Dr. Reichs has travelled to Rwanda to testify at the UN Tribunal on Genocide, and helped exhume a mass grave in Guatemala. As part of her work at JPAC (Formerly CILHI) she aided in the identification of war dead from World War II, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Dr. Reichs also assisted with identifying remains found at ground zero of the World Trade Center following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Dr. Reichs is one of only eighty-two forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. She served on the Board of Directors and as Vice President of both the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, and is currently a member of the National Police Services Advisory Council in Canada.

Cooper would get a butt-kicking administrator, which the SBI sorely needs, and a North Carolina resident, to boot. You see, Reichs is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.