Death Du Jour - Kathy Reichs

...Murder for Main, Decay for Dessert? It is rare to find an author whose first book urges you on to want to read all of their published work. In my life so far, I have found very few – Diana Gabaldon, Jane Austen, Martina Cole – and now Kathy Reichs. After recently reading her first novel, I was soon reaching for her second – Death Du Jour. I have since bought all her novels from Ebay! Reichs’ heroine is Dr. Temperance ‘Tempe’ Brennan. Like Reichs herself, Tempe is a forensic pathologist based in Canada. As you would expect with such a job, this involves a lot of work with corpses. Hence, her ... more

Following on from the success of 'Déjà Dead', Kathy Reichs has written another novel featuring Dr. Tempe Brennan, forensic anthropologist, also with French words in the title. Here, the title roughly translates to ‘death of the day’ in a gruesome version of restaurants’ ‘dish of the day’. It is March in Montreal. Brennan is exhuming the remains of an old nun who is now proposed for sainthood. However, she finds that the remains have been moved. Hours after returning home, she is summoned to the scene of an arson, where a young family has died. There are no ... more

Death du Jour is the second book in the series starring Dr Brennan, and is just as good, if not better. This book starts with a bit more excitement that the last book, with Brennan exhuming (digging up) a body from the 1800’s. Shortly after this there is a fire in a house where five bodies are found, including two small children who were only eighteen months old. These two stories run along side each other for a while, which does get a bit confusing at times. This book also details Brennan’s life as a tutor of a class in a small town called Charlotte in America and again, she goes back and ... more

Briliant book really enjoyed it, am currently reading the latest, a definate read if you like murder type books, and books by authors such as Patricia Cornwell as they fall under the same category although i do believe that Reichs is much better that Cornwell i think maybe because Reichs being an anthropologist can describe in vivid detail and has a deeper understanding, i came across Kathy Reichs after a friend reccommmended her books and im so glad she did, they recently made a TV series based on her books called Bones, which is particularly good although i must admit the characters are ... more

This is Kathy Reichs second book on her heroine Tempe Brennan. Once more set in Quebec, this one covers arson, interment and yet another serial killer (or is it a cult? read and find out!) This book gripped me, not quite as much as the first (Déjà Dead) but still a really good story, keeping you on your toes as it weaves and seems to vier off on tangent routes of investigation as avenues begin to close. Most interesting is the visit to the monkey sanctuary - just whos bodies are they buried on the island? Is there a cult burning themselves to death? None of the scientific stuff is skimped on ... more