Book Beginning: Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs

Published on by Margaret

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Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

This week’s book is Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs, one of my TBRs.

Déjà Dead (Temperance Brennan, #1)

 

It begins:

I wasn’t thinking about the man who’d blown himself up. Earlier I had. Now I was putting him together.

30879-friday2b56Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

These are the rules:

  1. Grab a book, any book.
  2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.
  3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
  4. Post it.
  5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

‘These murders have me pretty much uptight.’ I regretted saying it immediately.

‘What murders?’ Her voice was becoming thick, the words rounded and soft on the edges.

‘A pretty nasty one came in last Thursday.’ I didn’t go on, Gabby has never wanted to hear about my work.

 

Blurb (Goodreads):

The meticulously dismembered body of a woman is discovered in the grounds of an abandoned monastery.

Enter Dr Temperance Brennan, Director of Forensic Anthropology for the province of Quebec, who has been researching recent disappearances in the city.

Despite the cynicism of Detective Claudel who heads the investigation, Brennan is convinced that a serial killer is at work. Her forensic expertise finally convinces Claudel, but only after the body count has risen…

Tempe takes matters into her own hands, but her determined probing places those closest to her in mortal danger. Can Tempe make her crucial breakthrough before the killer strikes again?

~~~

Kathy Reichs is one of those authors that I keep seeing around, but I’ve never read any of her books. I wondered if I’d like them, so when I saw this book  in Barter Books a few years ago I brought it home with me – it’s been sitting on my shelves ever since. It’s the first in her Temperance Brennan series – and her debut novel.

Thisé quotation from The Times on the back cover makes the book sound irresistible:

Déjà Dead is terrific and terrifying in its own right, easily rising above Cornewellian similarities … Excellent plotting, appealingly headstrong heroine and superb mastery of tension.

Will it live up to such high praise, I wonder? If you’ve read it what did you think?

10 thoughts on “Book Beginning: Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs”

  1. I’ll be interested in what you think of this one, Margaret. I think Temperance Brennan is an interesting character. myself. In fact, I’m glad you reminded me of this series, because I’ve yet to do a spotlight on any of those novels, and I should.

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  2. I’ve read a couple of books in this series, but am pretty sure this wasn’t one of them. They were back in the days where I read what I found on the library shelf, not necessarily in order. I liked them well enough, but somehow I never really bonded with the characters. Now the TV show – I liked that a lot. And it is different than the books. Hope you enjoy it!

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  8. I’ve read this one and enjoyed it and book 2 even more. That’s as far as I got though and I’m not sure why. I’ve also seen about seven seasons of the TV series which is different to the books but not bad at all.

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