A riveting new Temperance Brennan forensic thriller from Kathy Reichs, the internationally acclaimed forensic anthropologist and New York Times bestselling author...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 the 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 part of 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."From Publishers WeeklyForensic 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. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistIn Montreal to testify as an expert witness in a murder trial, forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan is called to the basement of a pizza parlor where three bodies have been found buried in shallow graves. Her examination reveals that the victims, young women, were recently killed, and she convinces police to investigate the deaths as murders. Puzzled when the bodies don't physically match any of the missing-person reports from past years, Temperance delves deeper and uncovers a horrifying secret. Meanwhile, boyfriend troubles and a friend's marital woes add to Temperance's problems. Fans of Patricia Cornwell will relish the forensic detail-- determining the physical characteristics of the women from their skeletons, dating the remains, and performing tests to discover where the victims grew up and then spent the last years of their lives. A fast-paced and suspenseful mystery in a deservedly popular series. Sue O'BrienCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Read online