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Monday Mourning, Kathy Reichs
William Heinemann
Reviewed by Sheila Forbes (Courtesy of Taranaki Daily News)

Kathy Reichs is back in her favourite city, Montreal, where Temperance Brennan's special skills as a forensic anthropologist are once again required to unravel the mystery of three sets of bones found in a shallow grave beneath a pizza parlour.

Tempe's pet aversion, the icily dismissive detective Claudel, believes the bones to be more than a hundred years old and thus unworthy of attention. Tempe is determined to prove him wrong, especially when she discovers they are the skeletons of three teenage girls. Using the latest techniques, Tempe is able to show the deaths were comparatively recent, but she is unable to link them to any known disappearances. As she puzzles over the discrepancies she begins to have a terrible suspicion.

While detectives track down the previous owners of the pizza parlour, Tempe investigates the dark world of abduction and slavery. While she is doing so another death occurs and a mysterious case of stolen identity comes to light.

As well as trying to do her job, Tempe is struggling to make sense of not only her own love life with the suddenly elusive Detective Andrew Ryan, but that of an old friend, Anne, who has walked out on her marriage and come to stay. As the investigation continues despite the obstructive and disbelieving Claudel, Tempe unwittingly puts both women in sudden and serious danger.

Reichs has hit upon a winning formula in this series of books. Like her previous crime novels with a similar setting, she manages to hold the attention as she leads up to a terrifying denouement.

A forensic anthropologist herself, she does not hold back on the mind-boggling details of her work, in this instance Carbon 14 dating, and other methods of identification that add authenticity to the tale. A well-written and gripping whodunit.