Death Du Jour (Temperance Brennan Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

Death Du Jour was the first of the four books that I read and after finding it a thrilling, and intelligent read I was totally hooked.
The characters are fantastic and I found them incredibly easy to relate to. Reichs takes Tempe Brennan, the physical anthropologist on a tough journey causing her to struggle to separate professional ritual, from the stong urge to bring these people justice.

The language Reichs uses cannot help but emotionally involve the reader, and I always felt I was in Tempe's head as the story moved swiftly through the emotional rollercoaster to the shattering, unpredictable climax.
Personally, although I lack biological knowledge, I found the forensic explanations and crime scene procedure a fascinating insight into Tempe's profession that is well integrated into the story.

In addition to the professional experience,Reichs introduces Tempe to the prospect of a long awaited romance in Death Du Jour. Throughout the series, Tempe works with Detective Andrew Ryan and as they exchange very sarcastic, slightly flirtatious banter, the romance build-up for the reader runs parallel to the crime adventure.

All in all, Death Du Jour is the best of the four absolutely UNPUTDOWNABLE journeys.(No need to have read the others).
With all that makes a fantastic read, including suspense, romance, intelligence, speed, and fantastic characters, I FULLY RECOMMEND THIS, and all Reichs' books as I highly enjoyed them all and cannot wait for the next!

Plot: Tempe is a forensic anthropologist who spends the South Caronlina summer in Quebec/Montreal where she has to withstand harsh winter weather. She is exhuming the remains of an old nun who is now proposed for sainthood. However, she finds that the remains are no longer there. This makes her job a lot harder as the ground freezes. She takes her daughter Katy on a trip to meet a guy who would be able to help her with a project for her course but things go wrong and Tempe ends up discovering a half burried body on an island. Things go from bad to worse when more and more people are found missing and maulled. There is a horriffic arson attack on a house with children in it, the bodies are not discovered until a little later but imagining two 4 month old babies that have had their hearts removed while they are still alive can be a little too much to imagine. The body count rises and rises and Tempe seems to always be the one to try and solve it as though she is a police detective.

This was probably completly coincidental but as I was reading the book, I thought to myself that this seems a little like 'Murder, She Wrote'. No matter where Jessica Fletcher goes to stay there is always a murder and she just happens to be in the right place at the right time to solve it. Then I flicked the TV channel and it was actually on!! The same thing happens with Tempe - no matter where she goes, Death just seems to follow her.

The novel is based on work Kathy Reichs has actually done herself as she is a forensic anthropologist in North Carolina too. This is not a biography though but she does add notes in the back of the novel to the places she got the inspiration for in Bare Bones. Real life cases though are what she isn't allowed to discuss but she does say she has found a lot of the things she mentions. Because Kathy has this first hand experience, she is able to give clear descriptions which mean you are able to get a very vivid picture in your head - not always good!

I'm not going to lie to you and say this is a perfect book for night time reading to your child as it certainly isn't! The descriptions are very vivid and are really pretty disgusting at times. Even just the word 'putrified' sends shivers down my back!

The novel is in the first person giving Tempe's character full control of feelings and thoughts. Unlike Bare Bones, this novel contains very little humour from the Quebec detective Andrew Ryan - Tempe's future flame. One thing I did find better than her 2003 novel was there were a lot less abbreviated terms and those that are mentioned all have their proper names included so even if the reader has no knowledge of Forensic Anthropology, I was certainly still able to understand what they were talking about.

The novel contains a lot of French phrases, most of which have their English meaning beside them but at the beginning of the novel, Tempe says she thinks accents and graves were created for her to make mistakes so most of the French is very simple... e.g. 'Bonjour', 'Comment ca va?' .... etc. = Hello, How are you?

One of the greatest quotes from the book is one that features twice and is also printed on the back blurb:
"Another Day. Another Death. Death Du Jour. My God, how many such days would there be?"

Death Du Jour translates as Death of the Day - quite rightly so as there is a Death a day!

The novel also contains two chapters from her next book 'Deady Decisions'. I haven't started reading them yet as that will mean I'll want to buy that one too!

After having bought Kathy Reich's 2003 book 'Bare Bones', I knew I had to buy another in her collection. In my honest opinion, I loved this one even more than the first I read!

I did note some comparisons between this book and Bare Bones - although each is the same length (over 400 pages) and both have 35 chapters, Death Du Jour has a smaller font and packs a lot more into it. Bare Bones seemed a much easier read but I preferred this one as it has a better plot and more to cover.