Bone Addiction
By Ludmila Rishkova
We all know what the things that keep us from reading are. They are those legitimate things, such as school, term papers, exams, the work-socialization ritual, cleaning the dishes, laundry, feeding the baby and/or the pet, watering the flowers; we know the story as it’s a been-there-done-that routine for most of us. Of course, most of us fail to mention that we do keep time aside for our secret addictive behaviour; whether it’s a couple of back-to-back episodes of CSI, the mind-numbingly boggling Jersey Shore, or even the couch-bonding capacity of a Seinfeld marathon, we all have that one thing to which we devote a few sacred hours of our day. While for some that routine may involve changing, or saving, the world, for others it’s an obsessively compulsive tendency to either stay glued to the same TV shows, or read the same authors, or subjects, over and over, and over again.
In my case, the addiction is Kathy Reichs’ Tempe Brennan novels. Tempe, or Temperance, Brennan is a forensic anthropologist who inspired the TV series Bones. She does the dirty job of recovering and studying the dead. The long dead. The difference between her and your regular (if that word even applies to the profession in question) medical examiner is that Tempe does the skeletonised, the burned, the rotten, bloated, decomposing, mummified, you name it.
What makes Tempe so appealing that you want to spend several books in her company is that she always knows what she’s talking about. When she doesn’t, she makes sure she finds out. Aside from her high profile as a forensic anthropologist, she is quick-witted, has a dark sense of humour, loves her coffee and junk food, is quick on the judgment, and has her share of awkward moments and social blunders, all of which make her pretty human and good company.
What makes the novel so appealing, aside from Tempe’s character, is the intricate combination of different subjects. It is a mystery novel. A detective novel. It is a crash lecture on a particular aspect of physical or historical anthropology, biology, entomology and so on. It is a high-voltage action novel with explicitly and exquisitely macabre details. A mystery novel with feminist undertones, as Tempe constantly fights for her place in a male-dominated environment; a struggle that is doubly challenging as she has a great weakness regarding the ‘male dominance’, the male in question being Andrew Ryan, homicide detective of Sûreté du Québec: Stud Muffin.
Did I mention that Tempe shares her time between the Carolinas and Montreal? If there are no addictions on your winter agenda, track her down as she goes for a drink at Hurley’s, gets attacked on Ste-Catherine, or travels around Montreal for recovery scenes, suspect interviews and stake-outs located anywhere from Verdun, Downtown, NDG, through Westmount and even northern and southern metropolitan extensions of our lovely city.
I promise it is a thrill.