The weather is getting warmer which means I’m breaking out the old school police procedurals and forensic files types of books. I’m also passing on these books once I read them so I’m targeting the beaten up old paperbacks.
I love Kathy Reichs because she’s essentially writing a fictionalized version of herself and she writes what she knows – bones and forensics.
I love how much she loves Montreal. I do wish she would back off on street names and locations because unless someone is familiar with the city (yay, I am) I think it could be a turn off. For me, I love picturing where we are going and all the old buildings, touristy areas, china town, etc. There are lots of fond memories in Montreal and I enjoy the setting.
Anyway, it’s hard to go wrong with Bones. I liked the show. I like Reichs’ writing style. It’s easy to digest and while her scientific explanations occasionally make my eyes glaze over, I enjoy learning a thing or two and seeing the team solve the case. Brennan tries hard not to get emotionally involved but she feels deeply for the injustices done to the girls and women in her case. She also has this ping pong style of thinking that I can relate to.
Monday Mourning, like all of the Brennan books, can 100% be read as a standalone but when you read them in order you get the full picture of Tempe’s life. There’s a despicable series of crimes here to be solved that start with three skeletons in a pizza parlor’s basement and end with danger to everyone involved. Brennan is on the case with the Montreal detectives and it’s a book that I can read for an hour or two before bed and enjoy trying to solve the case with them.
This ending I didn’t see coming at all. The book is exciting and fairly fast paced and there’s plenty of personal things for Tempe to deal with too. I’m a fan of this series and hope to make the time to read more of them this summer!
Bookish Quick Facts:
- Title: Monday Mourning
- Series: Temperance Brennan #7 (reads as standalone)
- Author: Kathy Reichs
- Publisher & Release: Scribner, 2004
- Length: 383 pages
- Rate & Recommend:. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ For fans of the genre
Here’s the synopsis:
Internationally acclaimed forensic anthropologist and New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs explores the Stockholm syndrome—the psychology of a captive submitting to the ideology of a captor—in this mesmerizing new thriller.
Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist for both North Carolina and Quebec, has come from Charlotte to Montreal during the bleak days of December to testify as an expert witness at a murder trial.
She should be going over her notes, but instead she’s digging in the basement of a pizza parlor. Not fun. Freezing cold. Crawling rats. And now, the skeletonized remains of three young women. How did they get there? When did they die?
Homicide detective Luc Claudel, never Tempe’s greatest fan, believes the bones are historic. Not his case, not his concern. The pizza parlor owner found nineteenth-century buttons in the cellar with the skeletons. Claudel takes them as an indicator of the bones’ antiquity.
But something doesn’t make sense. Tempe examines the bones in her lab and establishes approximate age with Carbon-14. Further study of tooth enamel tells her where the women were born. If she’s right, Claudel has three recent murders on his hands. Definitely his case.
Detective Andrew Ryan, meanwhile, is acting mysteriously. What are those private phone calls he takes in the other room, and why does he suddenly disappear just when Tempe is beginning to hope he might be a permanent part of her life? Looks like more lonely nights for Tempe and Birdie, her cat.
As Tempe searches for answers in both her personal and professional lives, she finds herself drawn deep into a web of evil from which there may be no escape. Women have disappeared, never to return…Tempe may be next.
Thanks for checking out my book review of Monday Mourning by Kathy Reichs. This one comes off of my own shelves and as always, all opinions are my own ♥️
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