Deja Dead
by Kathy Reichs

Release Date: 8th May 2008
Publisher: Arrow
ISBN: 978 0 0992 5518 5
RRP: £6.99

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Solid crime writing at it’s best.

Deja Dead features Reichs’, Tempe Brennan, the forensic anthropologist based in Quebec. Brennan’s job means she gets to see a lot of death, but this time, there is something that is bothering her about the recent clutch of dismembered bodies being uncovered in Montreal, this time the killer decides to make it personal.

You wouldn’t want to read about the investigation into a dead animal that had been dismembered, so the obvious alternative is to go for the human species. What Deja Dead offers is a whole host of dead bodies, a positive stockpile of human beings reduced to bones and decomposed bodily parts... thankfully, the gore aspect is relatively mild without losing the sense of realism and chilling detail that is so much a part of Reichs writing style.

When Brennan’s intuition prompts her to looking at the recently deceased as linked, she is initially met with great scepticism and occasionally direct insult, but as the number of bodies increases it becomes more and more likely that Brennan is right. What Brennan failed to account for, was that the maniac responsible would start looking right back at her.

There is phenomenal depth and detail to Reichs writing, which can be at best, interesting, at worst, brain-numbing. The plot unravels at a predictable pace and you won’t fail to pick up on the direction of the “twist” at the end. It’s all a bit inevitable, but the getting there makes for good reading if you’re into your crime novels. With the veritable plethora of crime novelists out there, it can be difficult to distinguish one from another since the plots and endings are invariably the same.

What I liked about Deja Dead is that it goes just that little bit further. Reichs frees her killers to kill as many and as often as they like, which makes a definite change from those novels where there is the odd one or two murders. And giving it a personal touch absolutely livens this book up.

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11 March 2010: Rachel wrote:
A really good read.