The latest gripping thriller from the author of Grave Secrets and Bare Bones
Kathy Reichs is forensic anthropologist for the Offices of the Chief Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, and for the Laboratorie de Sciences Judiciaires et de M-decine L-gale for the province of Quebec. A professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, she divides her time between Charlotte and Montreal and is a frequent expert witness in criminal trials.
Ever had a bad Monday? Forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan's Mondays bring bodies that shouldn't be dead. Most recently her Monday begins in a muddy pizza parlor cellar, where she unearths bones that belong to three young girls and lead Tempe into yet another frightful case. By following the trail through frozen Montreal, Tempe enters a nightmare world of kidnapping and torture at odds with the Christmas scenes around her. Tempe's focus is never far from the girls, but she is distracted by her lover's unexplained remoteness and an old friend's marital woes. Michelle Pawk is an excellent reader; her elastic voice stretches with Tempe's continually shifting moods-from confident to anxious, from angry to gentle. Pawk's Southern and French accents are charming; she is even able to bring some warmth into the usually frozen Detective Claudel, Tempe's ongoing antagonist. Recommended for most mystery collections.-Juleigh Muirhead Clark, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Lib., Colonial Williamsburg Fdn., VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. (June 15) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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