Book Review: Death du Jour (Tempe Brennan #2) by Kathy Reichs

Death du Jour (Tempe Brennan #2) by Kathy Reichs

Release Date: 1st August 2000
Publisher: Random House
Format: Paperback
Pages: 436
Rating: 5.0/5.0

Summary from Amazon:

"Forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs exploded onto bestseller lists worldwide with her phenomenal debut novel Déjà Dead -- and introduced "[a] brilliant heroine" (Glamour) in league with Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta. Dr. Temperance Brennan, Quebec's director of forensic anthropology, now returns in a thrilling new investigation into the secrets of the dead. 

In the bitter cold of a Montreal winter, Tempe Brennan is digging for a corpse buried more than a century ago. Although Tempe thrives on such enigmas from the past, it's a chain of contemporary deaths and disappearances that has seized her attention -- and she alone is ideally placed to make a chilling connection among the seemingly unrelated events. At the crime scene, at the morgue, and in the lab, Tempe probes a mystery that sweeps from a deadly Quebec fire to startling discoveries in the Carolinas, and culminates in Montreal with a terrifying showdown -- a nerve-shattering test of both her forensic expertise and her skills for survival."

Review:
I really, really enjoyed this book. Unfortunately, I took this book away with me to read on holiday, and it wasn't until I opened to the first page that I realised the first book in the Tempe Brennan series was sitting on my bookshelf at home. Nonetheless, I persevered onwards, and whilst I may have had trouble understanding the back story (because this was the second book in the series and also because the TV show Bones, which is based on the books, is completely different), the story itself was amazing.

At the beginning, I was a bit wary - starting off by digging up a corpse to examine for sainthood didn't really appeal to my tastes - but as the story progressed it just became so complex and intense. **Possible spoiler alert** What began as seemingly unrelated stories became an intricate and complex narrative, with each individual story expertly woven to another so that at the end of the novel, every incident that occurred was somehow related to every other incident. Nothing was included just for the sake of it - Reichs has been superior in her writing and created a mystery that is captivating.

If you're a fan of crime and mystery, then you can't go past these books. But, if you're interested in reading the books because you've seen the TV show, don't get your hopes up - whilst the books are amazing, the only similarity between them and the TV show is that the main characters share a name. Once you get past that though, I'm sure you'll enjoy the books just as much as I did.