Books, tea and kitties: Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs review

Grab a cup of coffee or even better a cold one and cozy up to some anatomical exploration, and don't mind if you get your hands dirty up to your elbows digging for those bones.

I have been a complete fanatic of medical fiction since I was a teenager,all thanks to my dad who always said how great Cook's Comma was (ironically something he read when his appendix burst in middle of the night and he barely made it !) so I had to find out for myself what Reichs was all about. She writes about forensic anthropology and it's a wonderful series, I read the first book which I will post in a review below in 2010. Currently I'm up to book #14 - Flash and Bones which I will probably tackle soon. When it comes to a series I love I don't jump in and devour all one by one, I can stretch a series for a decade lol. That's just me, so here is the first, the one that started it all. I admit it was a bit long and I had issues my review seems a little stern but I am keeping it as it was written, I wanted to get to the bones and the nitty gritty right away but I'm glad I didn't let small stuff deter me, this is one of my top five favorite series to read :)

DEJA DEAD
by Kath Reichs ( Temperance #1)

Makes you feel like you live on borrowed time

As a fan of Cornwell, Palmer and Cook who loves medical thrillers, I was excited to finally read the first book in this infamous series. It certainly has its charms as well as downfalls, as much as I enjoyed and learned from it, I was agitated as well. First books can do that to you though; the good news is that I have the interest to stick with the series and all ready have the next ones to keep me going. One negative to it was the fact that the book suffers from over writing. There are simply too many words and pages, muddying the story and covering up the exciting fun and scary parts. This should have been edited tighter, the story didn't need 531 pages to be successful, the author was spilling her soul in too many directions, that said I still liked and enjoyed it but it was a relief to finally get to the end, and I love books, I would rather read than do almost anything, so that's saying something...

One of the first things I read in this novel that struck me as interesting was this little passage, "the fans and disinfectants never quite win over the smell of ripened death". Death in this novel is quite prominent, it's almost a character all on its own and everyone is scared to dance with it. Temperance Brennan who's a forensic anthropologist from North Carolina currently working in Montreal is solving some strange cases that seem connected; women who are chopped into pieces and discarded into garbage bags have sprinkled the area in the last few years. Her intuition tells her to research the probability that all those crimes have been committed by one person. As her search brings more answers she gets closer and closer to the grim reaper himself, the person responsible is suddenly interested in Tempe and will taunt her until she crack or catches him/her. Combined with grumpy bosses who don't believe her and few police friends she is on her way to solve these shocking crimes and bring some justice to the real victims whose killer was never punished for his or her deeds. I have personally adored the cop jargon, the witty and dry jokes had me chuckling while keeping me impressed at the author's ability to write such dual characters. The science and forensics were fascinating and of course gross but still kept me glued to the pages, if anything if made me feel even more mortal than ever before. I liked how smart the book was, but I felt that the cops could have done a bit more work, I know Tempe is the main character but it's less realistic when she's the sacrificial lamb who has to catch the killer with her own wit. I was frustrated with the use of too many words to tell the tale but I'm happy I read it. The climax could have lasted a bit longer but the last fifteen pages gave me some comforting closure. I will definitely read the whole series since I adore medical thrillers of all sorts and the more the better, but I hope the editing gets tighter in the future. I would rate this book as 3.5 if it wasn't for the exciting forensics, they were certainly the strong point of this first book.

- Kasia S.