 |
|
Publisher
Heinemann
The Random House Group
Ltd.
20 Vauxhall Bridge Rd.
London SW1V 2SA
England
tel: 44-207-840-8400
fax: 44-207-233-8791
email
website
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
Retail Suppliers
 |

Deja Dead
Purchase this book on-line

Amazon.co.uk Review
Reichs' stunning debut thriller draws on her experience as a forensic
anthropologist in North Carolina and Montreal, but it has considerably
more going for it than the mere stamp of authenticity. The devil is in
the details, and it is the small betraying details--the alignment of
cuts in bloody bone--that convince Temperance Brennan that a series of
women, murdered in different ways, were killed and dismembered by the
same hand and the same saw. Knowing what she knows is one thing, but
convincing her police colleagues is quite another.
Reichs skillfully depicts police canteen culture
and the way it ensures that someone who is an expert outsider, not one
of the lads, is always going to have to go that extra mile to prove
herself and her ideas. Brennan is a toughie, though, and not too fussy
about demarcation disputes. Reichs has found a way of having her cake
and eating it and giving us a detective who combines professional
expertise with enthusiastic amateurism. Even more compellingly, the
suspense is turned up several notches when Brennan realizes that she
is hunted as well as hunter--they find the killer's lair and find her
photograph among his trophies... --Roz Kaveney

Synopsis
When the bones of a woman are discovered in the grounds of an
abandoned monastery, Dr Temperance Brennan of the Laboratoire de
Medecine Legale in Montreal is convinced that a serial killer is at
work. The detective in charge of the case disagrees with her, but he
is forced to revise his opinion.

Death du Jour
Purchase this book on-line
Amazon.co.uk Review
After one of the more startling crime debuts of recent years,
Déjà Dead, Kathy Reichs has found herself, at a stroke,
regarded as a possible contender for Patricia Cornwell's crown as
queen of forensic detection novels. As the new book opens, her
forensic anthropologist heroine Temperance Brennan is doing what she
usually does--helping to identify remains about which there is almost
nothing suspicious. In this case she is dealing with a 19th-century
nun of vast sanctity, for whose beatification her relics and burial
site need authenticating. What could be simpler or less menacing?
Almost immediately, Tempe is called in on a bad case: arson, which has
left remains so damaged that a normal pathologist cannot cope--and the
victims that pathologists normally cope with include infants stabbed
to death.
Something sinister is going on, and whether in
Quebec, where she has her practice, or the sleepy South, where she
teaches, Tempe is not safe. Reichs' first book was good on the
domesticity and friendship to which Tempe retreats--and this time we
meet her younger sister, Harriet, who has just got rid of her
balloonist lover and is looking for a new interest. --Roz Kaveney
Express on Sunday
‘Better than Patricia Cornwell’
Excerpted from Death Du Jour by Kathy
Reichs. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
If the bodies were there, I couldn't find them. Outside, the wind
howled. Inside the old church, just the scrape of my trowel and the
hum of a portable generator and heater echoed eerily in the huge
space. High above, branches scratched against boarded windows, gnarled
fingers on plywood blackboards. The group stood behind me, huddled but
not touching, fingers curled tightly in pockets. I could hear the
shifting from side to side, the lifting of one foot, then the other.
Boots made a crunching sound on the frozen ground. No one spoke. The
cold had numbed us into silence. I watched a cone of earth disappear
through quarter-inch mesh as I spread it gently with my trowel. The
granular subsoil had been a pleasant surprise. Given the surface, I
had expected permafrost the entire depth of the excavation. The last
two weeks had been unseasonably warm in Quebec, however, allowing snow
to melt and ground to thaw. Typical Tempe luck. Though the tickle of
spring had been blown away by another arctic blast, the mild spell had
left the dirt soft and easy to dig. Good. Last night the temperature
had dropped to seven degrees Fahrenheit. Not good. While the ground
had not refrozen, the air was frigid. My fingers were so cold I could
hardly bend them. We were digging our second trench. Still nothing but
pebbles and rock fragments in the screen. I didn't anticipate much at
this depth, but you could never tell. I'd yet to do an exhumation that
had gone as planned. I turned to a man in a black parka and a tuque on
his head. He wore leather boots laced to the knee, two pairs of socks
rolled over the tops. His face was the color of tomato soup. “Just a
few more inches.” I gave a palm-down gesture, like stroking a cat.
Slowly. Go slowly. The man nodded, then thrust his long-handled spade
into the shallow trench, grunting like Monica Seles on a first serve.
“Par pouces!” I yelped, grabbing the shovel. By inches! I repeated the
slicing motion I'd been showing him all morning. “We want to take it
down in thin layers.” I said it again, in slow, careful French. The
man clearly did not share my sentiment. Maybe it was the tediousness
of the task, maybe the thought of unearthing the dead. Tomato soup
just wanted to be done and gone. “Please, Guy, try again?” said a male
voice behind me. “Yes, Father.” Mumbled. Guy resumed, shaking his
head, but skimming the soil as I'd shown him, then tossing it into the
screen. I shifted my gaze from the black dirt to the pit itself,
watching for signs that we were nearing a burial. We'd been at it for
hours, and I could sense tension behind me. The nuns' rocking had
increased in tempo. I turned to give the group what I hoped was a
reassuring look. My lips were so stiff it was hard to tell. Six faces
looked back at me, pinched from cold and anxiousness. A small cloud of
vapor appeared and dissolved in front of each. Six smiles in my
direction. I could sense a lot of praying going on. Ninety minutes
later we were five feet down. Like the first, this pit had produced
only soil. I was certain I had frostbite in every toe, and Guy was
ready to bring in a backhoe. Time to regroup. “Father, I think we need
to check the burial records again.” He hesitated a moment. Then, “Yes.
Of course. Of course. And we could all use coffee and a sandwich.” The
priest started toward a set of wooden doors at the far end of the
abandoned church and the nuns followed, heads down, gingerly
navigating the lumpy ground. Their white veils spread in identical
arcs across the backs of their black wool coats. Penguins. Who'd said
that? The Blues Brothers. I turned off the mobile spotlights and fell
in step, eyes to the ground, amazed at the fragments of bone embedded
in the dirt floor. Great. We'd dug in the one spot in the entire
church that didn't contain burials. Father Ménard pushed open one of
the doors and, single file, we exited to daylight. Our eyes needed
little adjustment. The sky was leaden and seemed to hug the spires and
towers of all the buildings in the convent's compound. A raw wind blew
off the Laurentians, flapping collars and veils. Our little group bent
against the wind and crossed to an adjacent building, gray stone like
the church, but smaller. We climbed steps to an ornately carved wooden
porch and entered through a side door. Inside, the air was warm and
dry, pleasant after the bitter cold. I smelled tea and mothballs and
years of fried food. Wordlessly, the women removed their boots, smiled
at me one by one, and disappeared through a doorway to the right just
as a tiny nun in an enormous ski sweater shuffled into the foyer.
Fuzzy brown reindeer leaped across her chest and disappeared beneath
her veil. She blinked at me through thick lenses and reached for my
parka. I hesitated, afraid its weight would tip her off balance and
send her crashing to the tile. She nodded sharply and urged me with
upturned fingertips, so I slipped the jacket off, laid it across her
arms, and added cap and gloves. She was the oldest woman that I had
ever seen still breathing. I followed Father Ménard down a long,
poorly lit hallway into a small study. Here the air smelled of old
paper and schoolhouse paste. A crucifix loomed over a desk so large I
wondered how they'd gotten it through the door. Dark oak paneling rose
almost to the ceiling. Statues stared down from the room's upper edge,
faces somber as the figure on the crucifix.

Deadly
Decisions
Purchase this book on-line

Amazon.co.uk Review
Kathy Reichs' forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan is arguably the
best of the current crop of thriller pathologists; her third outing,
Deadly Decisions, pits her reconstructive skills against a
bunch of Hell's Angels with a taste for ultra-violence. Hardly has she
pieced together the jigsaw fragments of identical twins, before she
finds herself engaged in identifying the teenage girl whose skull and
long bones turned up near the grave of some earlier victims of
inter-gang strife. Her sweetheart Ryan is under investigation for
corruption; her nephew is sleeping on the sofa and showing an unholy
fascination with bikes and bikers; and Tempe is having a series of
really bad hair days. In addition to the usual fascinating material
about the identification of human bones, Reichs tells us all about the
way in which biker gangs have become a serious part of the criminal
underworld, a subculture with a taste for mayhem and with rules it is
death to break. Tempe is on her usual brittle good form--a woman torn
between her cold clinical intelligence and a crusading desire to
avenge the helpless that regularly brings her into conflict with more
quietly committed colleagues. This is an excellent thriller that
combines real intelligence with a radical social anger. --Roz
Kaveney

Synopsis
Temperance, forensic anthropologist for the state of Quebec, is
recalled from a course for a gruesome duty. Biker war is raging in
Quebec and two of its foot soldiers have blown themselves up. She is
the person qualified to make sense of what remains.

Excerpted from Deadly Decisions by Kathy
Reichs. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Her name was Emily Anne. She was nine years old, with black ringlets,
long lashes, and caramel-colored skin. Her ears were pierced with tiny
gold loops. Her forehead was pierced by two slugs from a Cobra 9-mm
semiautomatic.
It was a Saturday, and I was working by special
request of my boss, Pierre LaManche. I’d been at the lab for four
hours, sorting badly mangled tissue, when the door to the large
autopsy room opened and Sergeant-Detective Luc Claudel came striding
in. Claudel and I had worked together in the past, and though he’d
come to tolerate, perhaps even appreciate me, one would not infer that
from his brusque manner. “Where’s LaManche?” he demanded, glancing at
the gurney in front of me, then quickly away. I said nothing. When
Claudel was in one of his moods, I ignored him. “Has Dr LaManche
arrived?” The detective avoided looking at my greasy gloves. “It’s
Saturday, Monsieur Claudel. He doesn’t wo—” At that moment Michel
Charbonneau stuck his head into the room. Through the opening I could
hear the whir and clank of the electric door at the back of the
building. “Le cadavre est arrivé,” Charbonneau told his partner. What
cadaver? Why were two homicide detectives at the morgue on a Saturday
afternoon? Charbonneau greeted me in English. He was a large man, with
spiky hair that resembled a hedgehog’s. “Hey, Doc.” “What’s going on?”
I asked, pulling off my gloves and lowering my mask. Claudel answered,
his face tense, his eyes cheerless in the harsh fluorescent light. “Dr
LaManche will be here shortly. He can explain.” Already sweat
glistened on his forehead, and his mouth was compressed into a thin,
tight line. Claudel detested autopsies and avoided the morgue as much
as possible. Without another word he pulled the door wide and brushed
past his partner. Charbonneau watched him walk down the corridor, then
turned back to me. “This is hard for him. He has kids.” “Kids?” I felt
something cold in my chest. “The Heathens struck this morning. Ever
hear of Richard Marcotte?” The name was vaguely familiar. “Maybe you
know him as Araignée. Spider.” He curled his fingers like a child
doing the waterspout rhyme. “Great guy. And an elected official in the
outlaw biker set. Spider is the Vipers sergeant at arms, but he had a
real bad day today. When he set out for the gym around eight this
morning the Heathens blasted him in a drive-by while his ole lady dove
for cover in a lilac bush.” Charbonneau ran a hand backward through
his hair, swallowed. I waited. “In the process they also killed a
child.” “Oh, God.” My fingers tightened around the gloves. “A little
girl. They took her to the Montréal Children’s Hospital, but she
didn’t make it. They’re bringing her here now. Marcotte was DOA. He’s
out back.” “LaManche is coming in?” Charbonneau nodded.
The five pathologists at the lab take turns
being on call. Rarely does it happen, but if an off-hours autopsy or
visit to a death scene is deemed necessary, someone is always
available. Today that was LaManche. A child. I could feel the familiar
surge of emotions and needed to get away. My watch said twelve-forty.
I tore off my plastic apron, balled it together with the mask and
latex gloves, and threw everything into a biological waste container.
Then I washed my hands and rode the elevator to the twelfth floor. I
don’t know how long I sat in my office, staring at the St Lawrence and
ignoring my carton of yogurt. At one point I thought I heard
LaManche’s door, then the swish of the glass security doors that
separate portions of our wing. Being a forensic anthropologist, I’ve
developed some immunity to violent death. Since the medical examiner
turns to me to derive information from the bones of the mutilated,
burned, or decomposed, I’ve seen the worst. My workplaces are the
morgue and autopsy room, so I know how a corpse looks and smells, how
it feels when handled or cut with a scalpel. I’m accustomed to bloody
clothing drying on racks, to the sound of a Stryker saw cutting
through bone, to the sight of organs floating in numbered specimen
jars.
But I have always been unsettled by the sight
of dead children. The shaken baby, the battered toddler, the emaciated
child of religious zealots, the preteen victim of a violent pedophile.
The violation of young innocents has never failed to agitate and
distress me. Not long ago I had worked a case involving infants, twin
boys killed and mutilated. It had been one of the most difficult
encounters of my career, and I didn’t want to reboard that emotional
merry-go-round. Then again that case had been a source of
satisfaction. When the fanatic responsible was locked up and could
order no more executions, I felt a genuine sense of having
accomplished something good. I peeled back the cover and stirred the
yogurt. Images of those babies hovered in my mind. I remembered my
feelings in the morgue that day, the flashbacks to my infant daughter.
Dear God, why such insanity? The mutilated men I had left downstairs
had also died as a result of the current biker war. Don’t get
despondent, Brennan. Get angry. Get coldly, resolutely angry. Then
apply your science to help nail the bastards.
“Yep,” I agreed with myself aloud. I finished
the yogurt, drained my drink, and headed downstairs.


Fatal Voyage
Purchase this book on-line

Amazon.co.uk Review
Tempe Brennan, Kathy Reichs' forensic anthropologist heroine, often
finds herself in physical jeopardy. In Fatal Voyage, her fourth
outing, someone is trying to kill her and also to destroy her
professional reputation with trumped-up charges of unethical behaviour.
Tempe is called in when a plane full of college
athletes goes down in the remoter parts of the forests of North
Carolina. She finds herself investigating a spare foot she rescued
from coyotes, a foot which is significantly more decomposed than the
crash victims and which has symptoms of gout, a disease most of the
dead young people had no time to contract. There is a locked house and
walled courtyard out in the woods that do not appear on any maps and
it seems almost as if her simple knowledge of their being there has
offended the powerful of the world.
As always, Kathy Reichs manages to combine a
detailed knowledge of who the dead were and how they died with a
profound sense of the sadness of things.
This is a book that never
lets us forget amid the dissections and tests for genetic markers that
each human death is that of a tragic and irreplaceable human being.
Tempe is one of the more attractive of the current crop of women
detectives simply because she is flawed and vulnerable as well as
smart, righteous and brave. Reichs never lets you forget that crime
novels should acquaint us with good people as well as human evil. --Roz
Kaveney

Literary Review
‘Genuinely thrilling’
Book Description
The fourth Temperance Brennan thriller from the international no.1
bestselling author.When a plane crashes high in the mountains of North
Carolina, Tempe Brennan is one of the first on the scene. As a
forensic anthropologist for the state, she serves on the region's
disaster response team. The task that confronts her is a sad and
sickening one: she and her colleagues must painstakingly identify the
victims. A chance discovery concerns her - a severed foot - well away
from the main crash site, but close by a deserted house which is
buried so deep in the woods that locals claim to know nothing of its
existence. Her examination of the foot throws up more questions than
it answers, and before she can make any progress, an anonymous
accusation is levelled against her. Tempe must fight to save her
professional standing. But she fears that, air tragedy aside, another
corpse lies somewhere in the woods. Pitting herself against a
conspiracy of silence, Tempe is determi! ned to bring justice for her
mystery victim… --This text refers to the
Hardcover edition.

Synopsis
When a plane crashes high in the mountains of North Carolina, Tempe
Brennan is one of the first on the scene. As a forensic anthropologist
she serves on the response team. The task that confronts her is a sad
and sickening one.

Excerpted from Fatal Voyage by Kathy
Reichs. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
I STARED AT THE WOMAN FLYING THROUGH THE TREES. HER HEAD was forward,
chin raised, arms flung backward like the tiny chrome goddess on the
hood of a Rolls-Royce. But the tree lady was naked, and her body ended
at the waist. Blood-coated leaves and branches imprisoned her lifeless
torso. Lowering my eyes, I looked around. Except for the narrow gravel
road on which I was parked, there was nothing but dense forest. The
trees were mostly pine, the few hardwoods like wreaths marking the
death of summer, their foliage every shade of red, orange, and yellow.
Though it was hot in Charlotte, at this elevation the early October
weather was pleasant. But it would soon grow cool. I took a
wind-breaker from the backseat, stood still, and listened. Birdsong.
Wind. The scurrying of a small animal. Then, in the distance, one man
calling to another. A muffled response. Tying the jacket around my
waist, I locked the car and set off toward the voices, my feet
swishing through dead leaves and pine needles. Ten yards into the
woods I passed a seated figure leaning against a mossy stone, knees
flexed to his chest, laptop computer at his side. He was missing both
arms, and a small china pitcher protruded from his left temple. On the
computer lay a face, teeth laced with orthodontic wiring, one brow
pierced by a delicate gold ring. The eyes were open, the pupils
dilated, giving the face an expression of alarm. I felt a tremor
beneath my tongue, and quickly moved on. Within yards I saw a leg, the
foot still bound in its hiking boot. The limb had been torn off at the
hip, and I wondered if it belonged to the Rolls-Royce torso. Beyond
the leg, two men rested side by side, seat belts fastened, necks
mushrooming into red blossoms. One man sat with legs crossed, as if
reading a magazine. I picked my way deeper into the forest, now and
then hearing disconnected shouts, carried to me at the wind’s whim.
Brushing back branches and climbing over rocks and fallen logs, I
continued on. Luggage and pieces of metal lay among the trees. Most
suitcases had burst, spewing their contents in random patterns.
Clothing, curling irons, and electric shavers were jumbled with
containers of hand lotion, shampoo, aftershave, and perfume. One small
carry-on had disgorged hundreds of pilfered hotel toiletries. The
smell of drugstore products and airplane fuel mingled with the scent
of pine and mountain air. And from far off, a hint of smoke. I was
moving through a steep-walled gully whose thick canopy allowed only
mottled sunlight to reach the ground. It was cool in the shadows, but
sweat dampened my hairline and glued my clothing to my skin. I caught
my foot on a backpack and went hurtling forward, tearing my sleeve on
a jagged bough truncated by falling debris. I lay a moment, hands
trembling, breath coming in ragged gulps. Though I’d trained myself to
hide emotion, I could feel despair rising in me. So much death. Dear
God, how many would there be? Closing my eyes, I centered myself
mentally, then pushed to my feet. Aeons later, I stepped over a
rotting log, circled a stand of rhodo-dendron, and, seeming no closer
to the distant voices, stopped to get my bearings. The muted wail of a
siren told me the rescue operation was gathering somewhere over a
ridge to the east. Way to get directions, Brennan. But there hadn’t
been time to ask questions. First responders to airline crashes or
other disasters are usually well intentioned, but woe-fully
ill-prepared to deal with mass fatalities. I’d been on my way from
Charlotte to Knoxville, nearing the state line, when I’d been asked to
get to the scene as quickly as possible. Doubling back on I-40, I’d
cut south toward Waynesville, then west through Bryson City, a North
Carolina hamlet approximately 175 miles west of Charlotte, 50 miles
east of Tennessee, and 50 miles north of Georgia. I’d followed county
blacktop to the point where state maintenance ended, then proceeded on
gravel to a Forest Service road that snaked up the mountain. Though
the instructions I’d been given had been accurate, I suspected there
was a better route, perhaps a small logging trail that allowed a
closer approach to the adjacent valley. I debated returning to the
car, decided to press on. Perhaps those already at the site had
trekked overland, as I was doing. The Forest Service road had looked
like it was going nowhere beyond where I’d left the car. After an
exhausting uphill scramble, I grabbed the trunk of a Douglas fir,
planted one foot, and heaved myself onto a ridge. Straightening, I
stared into the button eyes of Raggedy Ann. The doll was dangling
upside down, her dress entangled in the fir’s lower branches. An image
of my daughter’s Raggedy flashed to mind, and I reached out. Stop! I
lowered my arm, knowing that every item must be mapped and recorded
before removal. Only then could someone claim the sad memento. From my
position on the ridge I had a clear view of what was probably the main
crash site. I could see an engine, half buried in dirt and debris, and
what looked like pieces of wing flap. A portion of fuselage lay with
the bottom peeled back, like a diagram in an instructional manual for
model planes. Through the windows I could see seats, some occupied,
most empty. Wreckage and body parts covered the landscape like refuse
discarded at a dump. From where I stood, the skin-covered body
portions looked starkly pale against the backdrop of forest floor,
viscera, and airplane parts. Articles dangled from trees or lay
snarled in the leaves and branches. Fabric. Wiring. Sheet metal.
Insulation. Molded plastic. The locals had arrived and were securing
the site and checking for survivors. Figures searched among the trees,
others stretched tape around the perimeter of the debris field. --

Grave
Secrets
Purchase this book on-line

Grave Secrets Survey Results
Grave Secrets Interviews
Click
on the links below to read chapter 1.