Another day. Another death. Death du Jour. My God, how many such days would there be?' On a bitterly cold march night in Montreal, forensic anthropologiest Dr Temperance Brennan is exhuming the remains of a nun proposed for sainthood in the grounds of an old church. Just hours later, Tempe is called to the scene of an horrific arson. A young family has perished, and there seems to be no witness, no motive, no explanation. From the charred remains of the inferno, to a trail of sinister cult activity and a terrifying showdown during an ice storm, Tempe faces a nerve-shattering test of both her forensic expertise and her instinct for survival.

About the Author

Kathy Reichs is forensic anthropologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, and for the Laboratorie de Sciences Judiciaires et de Medecine Legale for the province of Quebec. She is one of only fifty-six forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Antrhopology, and served on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. A professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Dr Reichs is a native of Chicago, hwere she received her Ph.D at Northwestern. She divides her time between Charlotte and Montreal, and is a frequent expert witness in criminal trials.

Prizes

Another day, another death... The internationally bestselling follow-up to Deja Dead, the prizewinning debut novel by expert forensic anthropologist and author, Kathy Reichs 20041019

Reviews

Tempe Brennan is back, digging up a century-old corpse while trying to figure out what links all the people dropping dead around her. Can Reichs possibly match the success of her first novel, Déjà Dead, a best seller that won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel?

Forensic anthropologist Temperance "Tempe" Brennan of the Laboratoire de M‚dicine L‚gale in Montreal makes a triumphant second appearance in Reichs's powerful followup to her bestselling debut, D‚j… Dead. The novel opens atmospherically in a frigid church graveyard as Tempe labors to exhume the century-old remains of a nun so that the Church can posthumously declare her a saint. But the bones aren't where they're supposed to be according to the graveyard map, and there's something suspicious about them when they do turn up. Tempe's caseload multiplies as a house fire proves to be a horrific instance of arson and a university teaching assistant who's recently joined a cult goes missing. The three seemingly individual events begin to braid together, as the doings with the doomsday cult draw Tempe to North Carolina. As in D‚j… Dead, ReichsÄherself a forensic anthropologistÄrenders comprehensively and believably the cool, tense intelligence of her heroine. A North Carolina native who consults in Montreal only a few months of the year, Tempe still hasn't acclimated to the bone-chilling Northern cold, and if she's come to expect the misogynist attitudes of some of the Canadian officials, she still bristles at them. Also well presented are Tempe's refreshing compassion in the face of relentless autopsies, her ability to describe a corpse with judiciously graphic detail and her penchant for revealing the art behind the science on such matters as the preservation of a corpse's teeth. Reichs's first novel, which won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel of 1997, was compared justifiably to the Kay Scarpetta novels of Patricia Cornwell. Soon, Cornwell's novels may be compared to Reichs's. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. Major ad/promo; author tour. (June)

"Brennan is a winner, and so is Reichs."

-- "Daily News" (New York)