I haven't read much of the genre/subgenre either, though I recently read Tana French's "Into The Woods" which was damn incredible (basically skating the line between genre thriller and *legit* novel--dealing with an unreliable narrator and narrative tricks that go beyond typical beach read-y fare).

I've concluded that Reich's books are mostly her Mary Sue-ing herself [she went by the pen name Temperance Brennan for a while] and the show took what worked about Brennan and nixed what didn't.