Another Day. Another Death. Death Du Jour (Death du Jour - Kathy Reichs)

Member Name: sirg0508

Product:	Death du Jour - Kathy Reichs
Date:	07/11/04 (92 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Even better than Bare Bones

Disadvantages: Wrong place at the wrong time?

Death Du Jour is the second book from Reichs after Deja Dead (sorry I don't have accents etc.). Each book has the same herione and her story continues through each of the novels. Although the story continues, each is a novel in it's own right. I read the 2003 novel then went back to the 1999 novel. I can see disadvantages of this - e.g. the herione Tempe Brennan forms a relationship in the later novels but in this novel she is just getting together with him.

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.

Tempe's sister Harry features a lot in this novel which introduces more of her side of the family. Harry gets herself tangled up though in these guesome goings on!

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?

Looking at Amazon there seems to be two releases of this book - 1999 and 2000. I have the 2000 edition with it's white cover. Deja Dead has a darker cover and all the rest of Reich's books have black covers with ominous pictures. I don't think that the picture on this cover has any significance as I could not really place where it could be in the novel although there are a couple of places that it could related to.

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.

I managed to buy this book for the great bargain price of 1p at the Amazon Marketplace - the book is in very good readable condition - the cover and spine are just a little creased. I then had to pay 2.75P&P but the retail price of the book is 6.99GBP so I still made a huge saving!

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