Kathy Reichs writes in the vernacular: of the streets of certain parts of the USA and that is both entertaining and difficult at times. It's entertaining because street language can be so informal and creative that it's sometimes funny even though it's not meant to be.

Reichs is also a fully qualified forensic anthropologist, as is the main character in this book, Tempe Brennan.

Monday Mourning has at its centre some bones: human bones found in the cellar of a pizza parlour. The pizza parlour is to be found in French speaking Canada and that allows Reichs to have a few digs on that score. The detective assigned to this case, Luc Claudel, is a French speaker and his character is that of an unforgiving, undfriendly and uncooperative colleague. Part of the story is, of course, Brennan trying to prove Claudel wrong!

Although Reichs openly states that this story is based on a real, ableit much older, case, I found her approach to her bone work to leave a lot to be desired. In the other book of hers that I read Cross Bones, Reichs convinces me that she does what she says she does. In this book, my impression is that she has a passing knowledge of forensic anthropology but never practised it.

Brennan sets off on a trail of detection and ambition that sees her crossing swords with Claudel. Making mistakes. Having a dentist point out something that really should have been obvious ... her words.

The solution turns out to be much more complex than the average detective story and it gives us a few insights into the kinds of minds of people that you and I cannot comprehend. Brennan uses a story that I have come across before as a vehicle for part of this story: the story of someone imprisoning another person. In this case a man imprisoning a woman and using and abusing her at will whilst keeping her locked for up to 23 hours a day in a coffin like box.

Brennan turns this part of the story on its head to an extent and although she does the dippy thing of trying to solve that bit herself and comes cloth to being burned alive because of it, it gives her some stisfaction to get closer to the truth than Claudel did.

In Cross Bones, Brennan and Andrew Ryan are an item. In this book, they are not so close. More than that, there are doubts: some real and some perceived. I'll say no more since even this is a bit more involved than it might otherwise be!

In the end, Brennan gets to the heart of the matter and solves the case. There is a lot of interesting detective work along the way and I have only scratched the surface here. I find Reichs' books to be extremely easy to read and polished this one off within three sessions over three days: not bad for a 445 page tome.

I heartily recommend this book to all lovers of detective stories everywhere!

Duncan Williamson
26 March 2006