Deja Dead – Kathy Reichs

Read for the RIP VIII Reading Challenge.

I do watch the tv show Bones, so I was aware that it’s very loosely based on a series of books about an anthropologist names Temperance Brennan.    She does help the police solve murders, but that really is about as connected with the show as the books get.

This book is set in Montreal, where Brennan has ended up after a divorce.     She’s helping the metropolitan coroner’s office with any older bones that come through.    Sometimes they turn out to be animal bones, but sometimes they’re people, often missing people.

The story begins with a grisly find of a dismembered woman, whose body has been divided up and placed in trash bags, and buried in a park.     There’s something familiar about the case to Brennan – she remembers a case of a teenage girl that was similarly dismembered, and found a couple of years before.    Within a couple of days, another body is found, and Brennan is convinced they have a serial killer on their hands, but she’s the only one that can see the connections.    She manages to convince one of the officers to let her come along on the investigation, and things get even darker before they’re finally able to solve the mystery of these deaths.

The book really is different than the show – there was a definite higher level of detail involved (and I compare this to a show that we joke you should never watch while you’re eating).     It was darker too – I know there’s somewhat of a back catalog going now, but I don’t see this as a series you can blow through quickly – it’s definitely mood reading.      But it’s very well written, with good detail, and I do look forward to reading more.   Slowly.