Product Description

Forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs exploded onto bestseller lists worldwide with her phenomenal debut novel Déjà Dead -- and introduced "[a] brilliant heroine" (Glamour) in league with Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta. Dr. Temperance Brennan, Quebec's director of forensic anthropology, now returns in a thrilling new investigation into the secrets of the dead.

In the bitter cold of a Montreal winter, Tempe Brennan is digging for a corpse buried more than a century ago. Although Tempe thrives on such enigmas from the past, it's a chain of contemporary deaths and disappearances that has seized her attention -- and she alone is ideally placed to make a chilling connection among the seemingly unrelated events. At the crime scene, at the morgue, and in the lab, Tempe probes a mystery that sweeps from a deadly Quebec fire to startling discoveries in the Carolinas, and culminates in Montreal with a terrifying showdown -- a nerve-shattering test of both her forensic expertise and her skills for survival.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3280 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 480 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780671011376
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
"In Quebec, winters can be slow for the forensic anthropologist. The temperature rarely rises above freezing. The rivers and lakes ice over, the ground turns rock hard, and snow buries everything. Bugs disappear, and many scavengers go underground. The result: Corpses do not putrefy in the great outdoors. Floaters are not pulled from the St. Lawrence... and some of last season's dead are not found until the spring melt."

Readers of Kathy Reichs's cool and clever first forensic thriller Déjà Dead will recognize the ironic voice of Tempe (short for Temperance) Brennan, the North Carolina-born scientist who winds up working at the Laboratoire de Médicine Légale in Montreal. Here she bristles at the conservative attitudes of some of her Canadian colleagues.

Despite the cold weather, Tempe's workload quickly becomes heavy: the bones of a long-dead nun now up for sainthood have been moved and tampered with; a deadly house fire turns out to be arson; and a university teaching assistant disappears after joining a cult. Tempe must figure out where (and why) all the bodies are buried in the hard Canadian ground. Her investigations take her home to North Carolina, and to a strange colony living on an offshore island.

Unlike certain other writers who specialize in forensic pathology, Reichs doesn't revel in the horror of death or rub our noses in gore: she uses the science of death to reveal rather than to shock or startle. It definitely makes for easier reading--especially at mealtimes. --Dick Adler

From Publishers Weekly
Forensic anthropologist Temperance "Tempe" Brennan of the Laboratoire de M?dicine L?gale in Montreal makes a triumphant second appearance in Reichs's powerful followup to her bestselling debut, D?j? Dead. The novel opens atmospherically in a frigid church graveyard as Tempe labors to exhume the century-old remains of a nun so that the Church can posthumously declare her a saint. But the bones aren't where they're supposed to be according to the graveyard map, and there's something suspicious about them when they do turn up. Tempe's caseload multiplies as a house fire proves to be a horrific instance of arson and a university teaching assistant who's recently joined a cult goes missing. The three seemingly individual events begin to braid together, as the doings with the doomsday cult draw Tempe to North Carolina. As in D?j? Dead, ReichsAherself a forensic anthropologistArenders comprehensively and believably the cool, tense intelligence of her heroine. A North Carolina native who consults in Montreal only a few months of the year, Tempe still hasn't acclimated to the bone-chilling Northern cold, and if she's come to expect the misogynist attitudes of some of the Canadian officials, she still bristles at them. Also well presented are Tempe's refreshing compassion in the face of relentless autopsies, her ability to describe a corpse with judiciously graphic detail and her penchant for revealing the art behind the science on such matters as the preservation of a corpse's teeth. Reichs's first novel, which won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel of 1997, was compared justifiably to the Kay Scarpetta novels of Patricia Cornwell. Soon, Cornwell's novels may be compared to Reichs's. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. Major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
When her first forensic thriller, D?j? Dead (LJ 8/97) hit the best sellers list, Reichs was hailed by critics as the next Patricia Cornwell. Her heroine, forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan, was considered a worthy rival to Cornwell's medical examiner, Kay Scarpetta. Her new work proves that Reichs does not yet suffer the fatigue that has plagued Cornwell's later books. The novel opens with Tempe digging up the body of a nun buried more than a century ago in a convent graveyard in Quebec. While her job is to identify the corpse as a possible saint, Tempe's attention is drawn to the grisly killings of four-month-old twin boys and their parents. At the same time, Tempe's troubled sister Harry comes to Montreal to take a self-help workshop. Investigating these deaths leads Tempe back to the Carolinas, where more bodies are discovered on an island monkey preserve, and clues point to a mysterious cult. Fearing that her sister might be involved with this group, Tempe heads back to Montreal for a climatic showdown during the Great Quebec Ice Storm of 1998. Although the plot is somewhat contrived, this still offers an enjoyable read for Cornwell fans who want something new.
-AWilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Too many coincidences ruined it for me.
For the first 25 pages I was enthralled by the writing and the forensics. Then the coincidences piled up: 1. In Quebec, Tempe investigates the fiery death of a family (later found to be killed by a quasi-religious cult.) 2. In a totally separate storyline, Tempe is asked by a nun acquaintance to find the nun's missing niece ... who JUST HAPPENS to have links to the first murder. 3. Weeks later, Tempe's relaxing on an island off the Carolina coast when she JUST HAPPENS to discover the buried bodies of two murdered women. Guess what? This new crime JUST HAPPENS to be related to those murders way up north in Quebec. 4. Tempe's troubled sister, living in ANOTHER state, JUST HAPPENS to have recently joined the same murderous cult responsible for all these murders! Tempe doesn't have to pursue the investigation -- the clues just come flying to her from points all over North America. I am amazed that so many self-described mystery buffs do not even comment on these faults in their reviews. Did they not notice them? Or are they so dazzled by the forensic details (which are indeed excellent)that they forgot the basics of a believable plot?

Impressively real
Generally I do not read a lot of narrative prose, but when I do my preferred genre is the murder mystery. My friend Mo recommended Kathy Reichs' Death du Jour to me because of my interest in the sciences and anthropology. I have to admit the book sat on my shelf for about 3 months before I finally got around to examining even the cover, but when I did the author's professional credentials engaged my attention. Dr Reichs is a forensic anthropologist trained at Northwestern University and employed by both the state of North Carolina and the Province of Quebec as an expert in forensics and by the University of North Carolina as a professor of anthropology. Her expertise is definitely reflected in the content of the novel. After reading the first few lines of the book I was hooked. So much was this the case that I finished it in the space of a single afternoon.

Each of the characters is a real person with a distinct personality. The heroine Tempe, a forensic anthropologist--who is much as I imagine Dr. Reichs to be herself--is clearly defined as an individual. She has a past and a present and family relationships and problems much as we all do. Her sister Harry is not simply a carbon copy of the heroine. She too is an individual.

The mise en scene of the action in both Quebec and North Carolina are vividly recreated for the reader. One can almost feel the damp bone-chilling cold of a Canadian winter and the balmy days of a southeastern coastline. Incorporating the little details of activity such as specific restaurants eaten at and things ordered there, specifics of the medical examiners' offices in Montreal and how the character proceeds with her work there add verisimilitude to the narrative. It is abundantly apparent that the author knows her setting and her topic with the thoroughness of the professional participant as opposed to the diligent journalist. To a certain extent, there is a rather more graphic description of each of the deceased than in many mysteries that I've read with a similar format, but there is no attempt to make the subject particularly sensational, just very, very real.

Dr. Reichs' writing style is engaging and carries the reader along swiftly. The central characters are likable and human, much as those of Rita Mae Brown who's mysteries I tend to read just to "visit" old friends. Dialogue is realistic and is not gratuitous and designed to fill space but forwards the story well. Furthermore, it is well tailored to each of the individual characters, contributing to their three dimensional quality. Their mannerisms in speaking, their use of dialect all create a sense of "real people." The rhythm of the words encourages the reader to keep moving smoothly to the denouement.

My one and only complaint would be that the conclusion of the story of Sister Elisabeth Nicolet, the threads of whose history is woven through the main theme, is not quite as interesting as it might have been and leaves one feeling rather more distracted than entertained.

Certainly a mystery worth reading. If nothing else, you'll learn a lot about what forensics.

Exciting, so don't start reading it before bedtime.
A different kind of professional female sleuth with the feel of non-fiction fiction. The author is a real-life forensic anthropologist for the State of North Carolina, and is also a professor at The University of North Carolina. The author's character has been divorced, has a 'wacky' sister and a grown-up daughter,is working for the Province of Quebec and teaches at university as well. Dr. Temperance Brennan, the first person narrator, has co-workers who hate her and a male detective who irritates and attracts her. Real excitement is constantly being created because the distractions caused by her personal life interfere with her sleuthing, which the reader can figure out by a few minutes. Despite the University credentials of both character and author, the book is very readable and fast. If bone science doesn't give you the creeps, I suggest taking this book with you on summer vacation. (There is a lot of snowing in the book,a mental boost if the sun is getting too much.)