After one of the more startling crime debuts of recent years,
Déjà Dead, Kathy Reichs has found herself, at a stroke, regarded as a possible contender for Patricia Cornwell's crown as queen of forensic detection novels. As the new book opens, her forensic anthropologist heroine Temperance Brennan is doing what she usually does--helping to identify remains about which there is almost nothing suspicious. In this case she is dealing with a 19th-century nun of vast sanctity, for whose beatification her relics and burial site need authenticating. What could be simpler or less menacing? Almost immediately, Tempe is called in on a bad case: arson, which has left remains so damaged that a normal pathologist cannot cope--and the victims that pathologists normally cope with include infants stabbed to death.
Something sinister is going on, and whether in Quebec, where she has her practice, or the sleepy South, where she teaches, Tempe is not safe. Reichs' first book was good on the domesticity and friendship to which Tempe retreats--and this time we meet her younger sister, Harriet, who has just got rid of her balloonist lover and is looking for a new interest. --Roz Kaveney
"You’ll want to keep turning the pages long after lights out to find out what happens next ... Reichs’ real-life expertise gives her novels an authenticity that most other crime novelists would kill for" (Daily Express)
"With Kathy Reichs the reader knows they're in the hands of an expert" (Sunday Express)
"Reichs' seamless blending of fascinating science and dead-on psychological portrayals, not to mention a whirlwind of a plot, make [her novels] a must read" (Jeffery Deaver)
"It is becoming apparent that Reichs is not just "as good as" Cornwell, she has become the finer writer" (Daily Express)
"Reichs has reasserted her supremacy in the field" (Independent)