re:mote voices

Title: Grave Secrets/Death du Jour
Author: Kathy Reichs
Publisher:William Heinemann

Kathy Reichs has written about a half dozen novels featuring her forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan – a lecturer in North Carolina and police liaison in Quebec, which splits her time between the two. With my first reading of Reichs’ work – Grave Secrets – we start in Guatemala, with Tempe excavating mass graves, which resulted from the ethnic cleansing of past dictatorships. While there those that are responsible for past deaths but are still part of the current system try to prevent the past being dug up – which is the areas where I was first attracted. To make matters worse someone is killing young woman and doing their best to destroy the bodies – with the latest killing being the daughter of the Canadian ambassador, Tempe finds herself drawn in thanks to her connections to the Quebecois police.
Death Du Jour is Reichs second novel, following the debut Deja Dead, and my second reading of her work. Term time has just ended in Carolina, with which Tempe is spending some time in Quebec, which puts her on the scene for identifying bodies from a house fire – two burnt in their beds, but an old woman with a bullet through her head in the basement. Quickly bodies pile up, alarmingly in the Carolina area as well as Quebec, with Tempe warned off on a couple of occasions.
Reichs is a professional anthropologist, who is writing her character with a professional knowledge. The result is that the novel is fleshed out in a technical level. The plot level of the murders and investigations works well, the relationship aspects are of less interest – though the fact that the character has those levels of course fleshes her out as a person.