Deja Dead: A Novel (1) (A Temperance Brennan Novel)

Product Description

The first Temperance Brennan novel in the “cleverly plotted and expertly maintained series” (The New York Times Book Review) from the #1 internationally bestselling thriller writer Kathy Reichs.

Her life is devoted to justice—even for those she never knew.

In the year since Temperance Brennan left behind a shaky marriage in North Carolina, work has often preempted her weekend plans to explore Québec. When a female corpse is discovered meticulously dismembered and stashed in trash bags, Temperance detects an alarming pattern—and she plunges into a harrowing search for a killer. But her investigation is about to place those closest to her—her best friend and her own daughter—in mortal danger…

“A genius at building suspense” (
Daily News, New York), Kathy Reichs’s Temperance Brennan books are both “accomplished and chilling” (
People) and “ripe with intricate settings and memorable characters” (
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).

Review

“Great, suspenseful fun.”

—New York Newsday

“As good as Cornwell at her best.”

—Detroit Free Press

“Accomplished and chilling.”

—People

“What makes
Deja Dead so compelling, in addition to the authoritative descriptions of how a forensic scientist ‘reads’ the story the bones tell, is the character of Brennan—smart, persistent, gutsy, ironic yet vulnerable.”

—Judy Stoffman, Toronto Star

“Kathy Reichs knows how to put all [of her] exotic experience into a novel…. Quebec’s own Southern gal give[s] Cornwell a run for the money.”

—Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail

About the Author

Kathy Reichs’s first novel 
Déjà Dead was a #1 
New York Times bestseller and won the 1997 Ellis Award for Best First Novel. 
The Bone Code is Kathy’s twentieth entry in her series featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Kathy was also a producer of the hit Fox TV series, 
Bones, which is based on her work and her novels. She is one of very few forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. She served on the Board of Directors and as Vice President of both the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, and as a member of the National Police Services Advisory Council in Canada. She divides her time between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Montreal, Québec. Visit Kathy at KathyReichs.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Déjà Dead

I WASN’T THINKING ABOUT THE MAN WHO’D BLOWN HIMSELF UP. Earlier I had. Now I was putting him together. Two sections of skull lay in front of me, and a third jutted from a sand-filled stainless steel bowl, the glue still drying on its reassembled fragments. Enough bone to confirm identity. The coroner would be pleased.

It was late afternoon, Thursday, June 2, 1994. While the glue set, my mind had gone truant. The knock that would break my reverie, tip my life off course, and alter my comprehension of the bounds of human depravity wouldn’t come for another ten minutes. I was enjoying my view of the St. Lawrence, the sole advantage of my cramped corner office. Somehow the sight of water has always rejuvenated me, especially when it flows rhythmically. Forget Golden Pond. I’m sure Freud could have run with that.

My thoughts meandered to the upcoming weekend. I had a trip to Quebec City in mind, but my plans were vague. I thought of visiting the Plains of Abraham, eating mussels and crepes, and buying trinkets from the street vendors. Escape in tourism. I’d been in Montreal a full year, working as forensic anthropologist for the province, but I hadn’t been up there yet, so it seemed like a good program. I needed a couple of days without skeletons, decomposed bodies, or corpses freshly dragged from the river.

Ideas come easily to me, enacting them comes harder. I usually let things go. Perhaps it’s an escape hatch, my way of allowing myself to double back and ease out the side door on a lot of my schemes. Irresolute about my social life, obsessive