Déjà Dead (Temperance Brennan, #1) in What's the Name of That Book???

Feb 23, 2010 Trin rated it it was ok

Shelves: 1990s, american-lit, mystery

The TV show Bones is probably the best and worst thing to ever happen to this series. The best because it’s no doubt brought a whole slew of new, eager readers to these books—including ones like me, who are really only sporadic watchers of the show. And the worst because all those new readers will inevitably be hauling all their show-based expectations with them. At which point they will discover that this book is—to me, sadly—nothing like the show.

The main character both on TV and in print is c The TV show Bones is probably the best and worst thing to ever happen to this series. The best because it’s no doubt brought a whole slew of new, eager readers to these books—including ones like me, who are really only sporadic watchers of the show. And the worst because all those new readers will inevitably be hauling all their show-based expectations with them. At which point they will discover that this book is—to me, sadly—nothing like the show.

The main character both on TV and in print is called Temperance Brennan, and in both mediums she is a forensic anthropologist. That’s pretty much where the similarities end. TV Temperance is brilliant and socially oblivious—in short, she’s wonderfully weird. Apparently, her personality is based more on Reichs’ own than on anything in the novels (thanks, Wikipedia!), which makes me wish Reichs had stuck much more closely to writing what she knew, because book Temperance—or Tempe, as she prefers to be called—is far less entertaining. She’s just so...normal. Aside from her somewhat eccentric choice of career, she’s a fairly average woman with fairly average concerns (prior to getting caught up in the book’s serial killer plot, anyway) and tediously average thought processes, on which Reichs spends way too much time. (I’m not sure I as a reader ever need to hear about every stray song lyric that gets stuck in a character’s head.)

I have to say, I really prefer my main characters to be oddballs. This may be my predilection for socially awkward geniuses at play, but I really do think it’s especially important in a genre that can all-too-easily become formulaic: you know there’s going to be a bad guy, and in the end, you know he’s going to get caught. A good mystery is really all about the journey, so the person you are accompanying on that trip needs to be unusual in some way. Bones the TV show is full of weirdos and goofs, and is packed to the brim with surreal moments and humor and—at times, an overabundance of—wacky shenanigans. I was in the mood for something like that: a puzzle, some jokes, a dash of sexual tension to add a little spice. Instead I got a depressingly straightforward police procedural, anchored by a lot of stiff, mostly colorless characters and a protagonist who, in being rendered more “relatable,” becomes much less interesting than her TV counterpart. ...more

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Dec 18, 2009 Debbie is on Storygraph rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, mystery, 2009

I don't normally read murder mysteries, so was unsure what to expect. Overall, I really liked it, even though it scared the crap out of me and I had to put it down around 1 AM last night (my overactive imagination at work yet again). However, I sat down and finished it today and was glad I did. It was interesting, compelling, and thoroughly engrossing. It was nice to see some of the more procedural and sciency side of the investigation. ...more

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May 07, 2012 rachelish rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: crime, grown-up

Sometimes there is too much description of boring things. Sometimes the main character is really annoyingly stupid. But I did read it all in 2 days so it can't have been that bad.

This book would have been entirely different with mobile phones. ...more

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