Monday Mourning - Hardcover

Reichs, Kathy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743233476 ISBN 13: 9780743233477

Publisher: Scribner, 2004

Synopsis

Journeying to wintry Montreal to testify at a murder trial, forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan discovers three skeletons in the basement of a pizza parlor and realizes that she has stumbled into a crime from the past.

About this title

Review:

In Monday Mourning Tempe Brennan finds the bones of three dead adolescents in a basement and she has to convince her police colleagues that they are recent enough that the case should be investigated. The book has all the technical know-how, crisply explained, that we expect from Kathy Reichs; readers find themselves peering over Tempe's shoulder as she works out, not only the solution to a puzzle, but how to begin to solve it.

Reichs is a practising forensic archaeologist in real life--but she never forgets that her readers cannot be expected to know everything she does. For a genuine expert though, she is remarkably unpatronising to our ignorance--one of the reasons why Tempe has so many colleagues who know comparatively little is so that her explanations can instruct us while we watch prickly Tempe tread on colleagues' toes. Like all of Reichs' books, Monday Mourning has a pronounced sense of place--Montreal in the snow has rarely seemed so real. If there is a downside to this clever police procedural, it is that we get rather too much of Tempe's fairly conventional emotional life--apparent problems with her lover Ryan end up in quite the corniest of explanations for apparent individuality, while her concern for an apparently suicidal friend adds artificial suspense to a plot that was doing the whole thing quite well in the first place. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"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)

"Brennan is a winner, and so is Reichs" (Daily News)

"A truly impressive writer" (We Love This Book)

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0743233476
• ISBN 13: 9780743233477
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 303