Product Description

Tempe Brennan has come to Montreal from Charlotte in early December to testify as an expert witness at a trial. As Forensic Anthropologist for the province of Quebec, that's part of her job. She should be going over her notes, but she's freezing her behind off instead, digging in the basement of a pizza parlour. Not fun. Not with all the rats. And the cold. And, now, the skeletonised earthly remains of three people, three young women. When did they die? How did they get there? Homicide detective Luc Claudel, never Tempe's greatest fan, believes the bones are historic. Not his case, not his concern. The pizza parlour owner, the Prince of Pizza as Claudel calls him, found some 19th century buttons with the skeletons, another indicator of the bones' probable age. But Tempe has her doubts. Something doesn't make sense. She'll look at the bones in her lab and do Carbon 14 testing to establish approximate age. And she can analyse the tooth enamel to tell approximately 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 mysterious. What are those private phone calls he takes in the other room, and why does he suddenly disappear just when Tempe is beginning to trust him and to hope he might be part of her life? Looks like more nights at home for Tempe with a good book and Birdie, the cat. As Tempe searches for answers in both her personal and professional lives, she finds herself drawn deeper into a web of evil from which there may be no escape. Women have disappeared, never to return...Tempe may be next.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #357969 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Monday Mourning Tempe Brennan finds the bones of three dead adolescents in a basement and she has to convince her police colleagues that they are recent enough that the case should be investigated. The book has all the technical know-how, crisply explained, that we expect from Kathy Reichs; readers find themselves peering over Tempe's shoulder as she works out, not only the solution to a puzzle, but how to begin to solve it.

Reichs is a practising forensic archaeologist in real life--but she never forgets that her readers cannot be expected to know everything she does. For a genuine expert though, she is remarkably unpatronising to our ignorance--one of the reasons why Tempe has so many colleagues who know comparatively little is so that her explanations can instruct us while we watch prickly Tempe tread on colleagues' toes. Like all of Reichs' books, Monday Mourning has a pronounced sense of place--Montreal in the snow has rarely seemed so real. If there is a downside to this clever police procedural, it is that we get rather too much of Tempe's fairly conventional emotional life--apparent problems with her lover Ryan end up in quite the corniest of explanations for apparent individuality, while her concern for an apparently suicidal friend adds artificial suspense to a plot that was doing the whole thing quite well in the first place. --Roz Kaveney

Independent on Sunday
‘Reichs always delivers’

Daily Telegraph
‘It all adds up to a big value meal’

Customer Reviews

Back To Canada
After lazing around the American South for a couple of books, this one finds Tempe back in Montreal. The book starts well, with Tempe involved in a case almost from the first page. There follows an irritating section when she is giving evidence and has to prove her credentials as an expert witness. I suspect Reichs felt it was time to remind readers exactly what Tempe is and how she qualified to do her job: this section has no real connection with the remainder of the book.
The action is swift and smooth. Tempe's continual on/off relationship with her Canadian police officer continues, but not quite as obtrusively as in recent books.
Inevitably, our heroine gets too closely involved with her case and finds herself in personal danger. Reichs must be close to running out of plausible reasons why a forensic anthropologist keeps getting beaten/kidnapped/threatened with a violent end.
I carp. This is a good read, which moves Tempe Brennan along and provides much excitement on the way.
Recommended.

Brilliant!! Highly recommended (by me)!
Forget Shakespeare. Forget Joseph Conrad and that other one who wrote the Harry Potter books. If you want drama, suspense and a Canadian adventure, read this book. This thriller has the intellectual firepower to change your perspective on everything, from abortion to Iraq, from murdurers to gays.
Ok, firstly, this is a masterpiece. I have to just write that down. Secondly, this is a book about an ordinary woman (who happens to have a degree in forensic anthropology), who is confronted with a series of connected murders in Montreal. Already, the reader is intrigued because anyone can identify with the main themes. She is strong-willed, quick-witted, has an eye for hot men, and likes to eat in a nice restaurant with the latter. We are catapulted into an amazing adventure with a few French Canadian twists along the way.
How did I find this book, you may ask? At an airport? At a news-stand in a homogeneous metropolis? In a car boot sale? In a bin? No. A few days ago, a male friend of mine heard that I had contracted diphtheria so he came over to my house. He knew there was nothing to be said to console me, so he handed me the aforementioned book. I was mesmerized by the title, especially since it was a Monday at the time. When I looked up, he had disappeared in a puff of smoke and I haven't heard from him since. That was 4 months ago.
Anyway, if you want to turn your life around and get a flavour of life in North America, buy this book pronto. It certainly has changed mine: I've quit my job as an investment manager and I'm working in a home for the elderly.
Thanks for your time

A vastly improved writer.
I admit that I have struggled with Kathy Reichs in the past. I know others have rated her highly and compared her to Patricia Cornwell, but I failed to see any comparison.

Reichs' failings, I felt, lay in her plotting and dialogue. Her characters always seemed very one-dimensional and uninviting, even though she had come up with some promising storylines. Reichs' previous efforts have, to me at least, been very artificial and amateur, clunky and awkward.

However, with Monday Mourning Reichs has transformed herself. Her characters suddenly have depth and believability; better, their dialogue has become life-like as the author has discovered (or uncovered) her ability to write funny, sardonic, sarcastic and sometimes ironic lines for her characters to deliver. Suddenly, I found that I laughed out loud at odd points when reading. Not real belly laughs as you get with Tom Sharrpe, but nonetheless some very witty moments to be enjoyed.

The plot is good. It is almost beleivable (I'm still not totally convinced about forensic anthropologists being called in so early in investigations) and we can see why the heroine, Brennan, has been involved. We see her struggle with the sheer evil that confronts her in this book. Indeed, the evil that is the main story in the book will take your breath away when it's uncovered.

So, all in all, a much improved writer showing some real skill at last.