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Jul. 31st, 2010 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennariaMONDAY MOURNING, by Kathy Reichs.
Cover copy: Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist for both North Carolina and Quebec, has come from Charlotte to Montreal during the bleak days of December to testify as an expert witness at a murder trial.
She should be going over her notes, but instead she's digging in a basement of a pizza parlor. Not fun. Freezing cold. Crawling rats. And now, the skeletonized remains of three young women. How did they get there? When did they die?
Homicide detective Luc Claudel, never Tempe's greatest fan, believes the bones are historic. Not his case, not his concern. The pizza parlor owner found nineteenth century buttons in the cellar with the skeletons. Claudel takes them as an indicator of the bones' antiquity.
But something doesn't make sense. Tempe examines the bones in her lab and establishes approximate age with Carbon 14. Further study of tooth enamel tells her where the women were born. If she's right, Claudel has three recent murders on his hands. Definitely his case.
Detective Andrew Ryan, meanwhile, is acting mysteriously. What are those private phone calls he takes in the other room, and why does he suddenly disappear just when Tempe is beginning to hope he might be a permanent place in her life? Looks like more lonely nights for Tempe and Birdie, her cat.
As Tempe searches for answers in both her personal and professional lives, she finds herself drawn deep into a web of evil from which there may be no escape. Women have disappeared, never to return...Tempe may be next.
With its powerful mix of nail-biting suspense and cutting-edge forensic science, MONDAY MOURNING is the best yet from this superbly gifted, megastar author who as New York Newsday says, is "the real thing."
Gender of detective: female
Yay, Bones!
Er. Ahem. No, there isn't any actual crossover between the television series and the novels, at least not with this novel. As I understand it, it's more of an 'inspired by' sort of situation than any direct adaptation.
The books, for example, are much more careful about their science. Despite the implications of the cover copy, Brennan doesn't do all the science: she's scrupulous about giving credit where credit is due to other labs, other scientists, who can do the tests she can't. This isn't CSI, where they're able to do every test known to man and in triple-time. Reichs is admittedly a little too fond of ending chapters on a "had I but known" sort of note, but she's at least decent at following up with something that would genuinely have been different, had she known, as opposed to something where I can't come up with anything that would have changed.
My one qualm about the book: the first two thirds are spent on evidence and logic, and then they figure out who they're going after and the last third abruptly turns into a suspense thriller, with kidnappings and last-minute rescues and such. Yes, this does mean Tempe needs to get rescued. Boo.
*
Stef's boy is over here, reading manga and grumbling about panels that are out of context and don't make sense. Then again, it is MUSHISHI he's reading.
Cover copy: Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist for both North Carolina and Quebec, has come from Charlotte to Montreal during the bleak days of December to testify as an expert witness at a murder trial.
She should be going over her notes, but instead she's digging in a basement of a pizza parlor. Not fun. Freezing cold. Crawling rats. And now, the skeletonized remains of three young women. How did they get there? When did they die?
Homicide detective Luc Claudel, never Tempe's greatest fan, believes the bones are historic. Not his case, not his concern. The pizza parlor owner found nineteenth century buttons in the cellar with the skeletons. Claudel takes them as an indicator of the bones' antiquity.
But something doesn't make sense. Tempe examines the bones in her lab and establishes approximate age with Carbon 14. Further study of tooth enamel tells her where the women were born. If she's right, Claudel has three recent murders on his hands. Definitely his case.
Detective Andrew Ryan, meanwhile, is acting mysteriously. What are those private phone calls he takes in the other room, and why does he suddenly disappear just when Tempe is beginning to hope he might be a permanent place in her life? Looks like more lonely nights for Tempe and Birdie, her cat.
As Tempe searches for answers in both her personal and professional lives, she finds herself drawn deep into a web of evil from which there may be no escape. Women have disappeared, never to return...Tempe may be next.
With its powerful mix of nail-biting suspense and cutting-edge forensic science, MONDAY MOURNING is the best yet from this superbly gifted, megastar author who as New York Newsday says, is "the real thing."
Gender of detective: female
Yay, Bones!
Er. Ahem. No, there isn't any actual crossover between the television series and the novels, at least not with this novel. As I understand it, it's more of an 'inspired by' sort of situation than any direct adaptation.
The books, for example, are much more careful about their science. Despite the implications of the cover copy, Brennan doesn't do all the science: she's scrupulous about giving credit where credit is due to other labs, other scientists, who can do the tests she can't. This isn't CSI, where they're able to do every test known to man and in triple-time. Reichs is admittedly a little too fond of ending chapters on a "had I but known" sort of note, but she's at least decent at following up with something that would genuinely have been different, had she known, as opposed to something where I can't come up with anything that would have changed.
My one qualm about the book: the first two thirds are spent on evidence and logic, and then they figure out who they're going after and the last third abruptly turns into a suspense thriller, with kidnappings and last-minute rescues and such. Yes, this does mean Tempe needs to get rescued. Boo.
*
Stef's boy is over here, reading manga and grumbling about panels that are out of context and don't make sense. Then again, it is MUSHISHI he's reading.