Monday Mourning
From Publishers Weekly
Forensic scientist Tempe Brennan isn't happy: it's
freezing in Montreal, her detective boyfriend is giving her the cold
shoulder and her macho colleagues won't take her seriously. When Reichs's
heroine is called in to examine three skeletons discovered in the basement
of a pizza parlor at the start of the seventh installment in this popular
series, her instincts tell her a crime was recently committed. Chauvinistic
homicide detective Luc Claudel doesn't agree, but Tempe forges ahead and
soon discovers that the victims are young women, probably teenagers killed
sometime in the 1980s. Already feeling vulnerable because she's left her
beloved daughter, Katy, back home in North Carolina, Tempe is further
troubled by the indifference of formerly avid lover Andrew Ryan (another
Montreal detective). Meanwhile, new developments lead Tempe and her
reluctant colleagues to suspect a creepy former pawn store owner of serial
kidnappings, torture and grisly murder. What's best about Reichs, and often
unappreciated in reviews, is not the informative detail that she brings to
Tempe's forensic sleuthing, though that's certainly engrossing. It's the
same well-observed detail and incisive analysis applied to other aspects of
the story. Tempe deconstructs Ryan's every evasive gesture and casual
comment and describes an ominously darkened room, the glow from a UV light
and an armada of snow plows with vivid precision. Here, as previously,
readers will be as invested in Tempe's life as in her case. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All
rights reserved.
SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Bare Bones
From
Publishers Weekly
Feisty forensic anthropologist Temperance (Tempe)
Brennan is supposed to be on vacation, but body parts keep turning up. At
the start of her sixth adventure, she's awaiting the arrival of her
current flame, Quebecois sleuth Andrew Ryan, so she can head for the beach
near her hometown of Charlotte, N.C. Before he shows up, she's called in
to use her world-class forensics skills when a local janitor's infant
granddaughter is found dead and charred in an oven. Then some strange,
decomposing remains (" `Human?' `I'm not sure' ") are discovered by
Brennan's dog during a barbecue at a local lakeside resort. Ryan finally
arrives, but Brennan's vacation is indefinitely put on hold when a small
plane crashes nearby. Two people are dead, and her expertise is required
yet again ("The skull had suffered massive communitive fracturing on
impact. The fire had done the rest"). Brennan eventually realizes that all
three cases are linked to a drug-smuggling ring that also dabbles in
poaching exotic animals. As she pursues her investigations, she is forced
to work with "Skinny" Slidell, a redneck cop who rubs her the wrong way,
but tension is defused by the presence of Ryan, who gamely gives up his
vacation to pitch in. He matches Brennan quip for quip, and Tempe's dog,
Boyd, provides extra comic relief. Reichs has built a reputation on
cut-to-the-chase writing and swift plotting, and this latest effort
delivers everything her fans have come to expect. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Fatal Voyage
From
Publishers Weekly
With four crime thrillers to her name, Reichs (Deadly Decisions)
seems to have settled into a comfortable routine with forensic
anthropologist Temperance Brennan, whose adventures grow more engrossing
with each outing. Here, Tempe takes on an especially gruesome case in a
richly plotted tale about an airline crash, missing body parts and
cannibalism. The story opens in the rugged backwoods of North Carolina,
where Tempe must identify the dead from the remains of a passenger jet
that spiraled straight into the ground. While rummaging through the grisly
debris, she comes across a foot that doesn't appear to match any of the 88
dead people aboard the jet. As investigators determine what brought the
plane down, Tempe looks into the mystery of the foot. That seemingly
well-intentioned pursuit gets her fired. Her ouster appears to be the
doing of Lt. Gov. Parker Davenport, an ambitious politician taking an
abnormal interest in the crash. Tempe, determined to restore her
reputation, plows back into the case on the sly. What she finds is
evidence of a chilling, depraved episode in local history that upends many
common perceptions about North Carolina's political and business elite.
Reichs, herself a highly accomplished forensic anthropologist, expertly
directs a busy plot that moves with electrical force in the final quarter.
She capitalizes on the morbid yet captivating aspects of the forensic
trenchwork, yet never lets it overwhelm her story. But it is Reichs's
ongoing development of Tempe a woman in her 50s with a mature
understanding of human nature, and a self-deprecating sense of humor that
truly lifts the book above many of its peers.
From
Booklist -
*Starred Review*
Initially, it appears the only tragic journey traced in Reichs' fourth
Tempe Brennan tale is the devastating crash, in western North Carolina's
forested hills, of a regional airliner full of college soccer players and
their fans. Brennan, a forensic anthropologist who (like Reichs) works in
both North Carolina and Quebec, joins with federal and state postcrash
investigators, matching horrific body fragments to TransSouth Air Flight
228's passengers. Much to Brennan's surprise, Montreal cop Andrew Brennan
shows up; his partner, Jean Bertrand, was booked on the flight, escorting
an extradited prisoner. But Brennan encounters a forensic inventory
problem: the foot she rescued from a pack of coyotes doesn't match anyone
on the plane. When Brennan tries to identify its owner, she's smeared by a
politician desperate to preserve the secrets of a group of power brokers
who have gathered for years at a nearby hunting lodge. To save her
reputation (and her life), Brennan must find the source of the telltale
foot. A complicated, involving mystery.
-- Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
From
Library Journal
Reichs is at the top of her game with her fourth forensic thriller
(after Deadly Decisions) as once again Dr. Tempe Brennan must "tease
posthumous tales from bones," utilizing all of her skills as a
forensic anthropologist to put the dead to rest. Tempe is called to the
Great Smoky Mountains, scene of the crash of TransSouth Air flight 228
where 88 souls suffered gruesome deaths. As the medical teams work to
reassemble and identify bodies, Tempe makes a disturbing discovery a foot
that doesn't belong to any of the victims. While investigating the foot's
origins, Tempe stumbles on a mountain cabin and is immediately banned from
the recovery operations, accused of malfeasance. Something sinister is
going on, and Tempe must unravel the mystery to save her reputation. What
she discovers is shocking. Reichs once again proves that she is master of
the genre; her science is impeccable, her characters are believably
complex, and her plotting and pacing are nearly flawless. Often compared
to Patricia Cornwell, Reichs is raising the bar. Highly recommended for
all fiction collections.
--
Rebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Calumet
Lib., Hammond, IN.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Death du Jour
From Publishers Weekly
"Triumphant... As in Déjà Dead, Reichs... renders comprehensively
and believably the cool, tense intelligence of her heroine. Reich's first novel... was
compared justifiably to the Kay Scarpetta novels of Patricia Cornwell. Soon Cornwell's
novels may be compared to Reichs's."
From Kirkus Reviews, March 19,
1999
Called from her peaceful exhumation of the century-old bones of Sister Elisabeth
Nicolet, whose heroic work during Quebec's 1885 smallpox epidemic may qualify her for
sainthood, consulting anthropologist Temperance Brennan finds herself in a charnel house.
The two bodies that have been discovered in a burning house in St-Jovite were both
murdered, one horribly, before the fire was set, and four more corpses, two of them
infants, are found nearby. This tableau, showing Reichs's strength in the gruesome details
of forensics, is only Act One of a tale that will involve Tempe with a student missing
from McGill University, a threateningly oracular professor of religious studies, and
Tempe's own flamboyant sister, Harriet Lamour. When the grisly discoveries Tempe's made in
the lab link the dead of St-Jovite to Dominick Owens's commune in sleepy Beaufort, South
Carolina, the site of two other killings, the evidence shrieks conspiracy, and the prose
shrieks along with it: chapters end with the likes of Tempe's trepidation escalat[ing] to
real fear, an icy wind rocketing through my soul, and my jaw dropp[ing] in amazement.
Beneath all the hand-wringing, readers with strong stomachs will find an even broader
canvas than Deja Dead (1997), Reichs's striking debut, though one with more mystification
than mystery. Reichs plots ambitiously, knows her way around a morgue, isn't afraid to
pile on the Grand Guignol, and spins a tale that reads, well, like a house afire.
-- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Deja Dead
From The New York Times Book Review,
Marilyn Stasio
Although she walks and talks like a clone of Kay Scarpetta, the testy medical examiner
in Patricia Cornwell's novels, Brennan comes by her forensic expertise legitimately, as
the alter ego of a first-time author who is herself an anthropologist for the province of
Quebec.
From
Library Journal August 1997
A superb new writer introducters her intrepid heroine to crime fiction. Dr. Tempe
Brennan, a trowel-packing forensic anthropologist from North Carolina, works in Montreal's
Laboratoire de Medecine Legale examining recovered bodies to help police solve
missing-persons cases and murders. It's clear to Tempe that the remains of several women
killed and savagely mutilated point to a sadistic serial killer, but she can't convince
the police. Determined to prevent more brutal deaths, she sleuths solo, tracking her
quarry through Montreal's seedy underworld of hookers, where her anthropologist friend
Gabby, doing her own scary research, is being stalked by a creep. Despite her ability to
work among fetid, putrfying smells that "leap out and grab" and her
"go-to-hell attitude" with seasoned cops, Tempe is as vulnerable as a soft
Carolina morning. When a grinning skull is planted in her garden, her investigation turns
personal and escalates to an intense and satisfying conclusion. Except for imparting an
excess of lab information, Reichs, also a forensic anthropologist, drives the pace at a
heady clip. A first-class writer, she dazzels readers with sensory imagery that is apt,
fresh, and funny (e.g., "fingers felt cold and limp like carrots kept too long in a
cooler bin"). Recommended for all fiction collections, this read is sure to be in
demand. -Molly Gorman
From
Booklist , July 19, 1997
Temperance Brennan may not be competition for Kay Scarpetta, Patricia Cornwell's
medical examiner, in the romance department, but she's just as stubborn and almost as
astute when it comes to sleuthing. While investigating a grisly discovery for the Montreal
coroner's office, Tempe finds herself remembering a similar investigation she conducted on
the remains of a woman who was savagely dismembered and stuffed in garbage bags. When
Tempe's concerns about a serial killer are dismissed by the police, she decides to pursue
the matter herself--a course of action that both puts her career on the line and so
effectively upsets the murderer's plan that he sets his sights on her. Montreal, with its
French culture, is an enticing setting for Reichs' first mystery, and as a forensic
anthropologist who spends part of her time working for the Province of Quebec, Reich knows
the city well. She also contributes a wealth of authentic medical detail as she follows
Tempe on her gripping, convoluted quest to catch a psychotic killer. A high-voltage
thriller that readers won't want to put down. Reichs' novel generated great interest at
the Frankfurt Book Fair and prompted a big-numbers rights auction.
--
Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright© 1997, American Library Association. All rights reserved.
From
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1997
"...Readers ravenous for ghoulish detail and hints of unfathomable evil, spruced up
by the modishly effective Quebec setting, will gobble this first course greedily and
expect better-balanced nutrition next time."
