The dead don't lie

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The dead don't lie (in the English original: Déjà Dead ) is the first crime novel by the American author Kathy Reichs from 1997. The novel is about the forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Tempe" Brennan, who works in Montreal as an advisor to the local police force. In this novel, Tempe and the police investigate a series of murders in which women are found dismembered and partially disembowelled and buried in plastic bags. Based on Tempes' forensic analyzes and their own investigations, the police finally manage to catch the serial killer. Dead Lies Don't Lie is the first volume in a series of crime novels starring Temperance Brennan, which developed into international bestsellers. The main character of the novels is also the template for the main character of the television series Bones - The Bone Hunter .

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A young woman is found dead in trash bags. Isabelle Gagnon, 23 years old, was murdered and dismembered. Dr. Temperance "Tempe" Brennan is looking forward to a weekend in Quebec City when police find Gagnon's almost completely decomposed body on a church compound. Tempe, in her capacity as a forensic anthropologist, is tasked with examining the bones wrapped in garbage bags. She sees parallels to a similar case that she worked on a year ago. In addition, she recognizes connections with two other corpse finds, since by comparing the bones she can determine an almost identical approach to victim mutilation. However, the police, particularly Detective Luc Claudel, refuse to believe their theory of a serial killer.

While Tempe is dealing with these murders, she becomes involuntarily involved in the activities of her friend Gabby. Gabby, an anthropologist like Tempe, does field research in the Montreal prostitute community. She reports to Tempe that she feels persecuted and even asks Tempe once for help to escape her stalker. When Gabby disappears for some time several times, Tempe looks for her and thus comes into contact with some prostitutes who are part of Gabby's research project. Tempe learns from the prostitutes about a creepy customer with strange tastes and suspects that he is Gabby's stalker.

In the Isabelle Gagnon case, the police can follow a lead: someone has used Isabelle Gagnon's debit card in a kiosk, so that the police now have a blurred image of a suspect from a surveillance camera. Questioning some residents near the kiosk finally leads Tempe and the police to a seemingly empty apartment on Rue Berger. However, it turns out that the suspect is hidden in the apartment but escapes the police. Upon examining the apartment, it is found that the owner of the apartment, St. Jacques, has collected a large number of newspaper clippings about murders in the Montreal area. Tempe also found a map with a cross marked different places in Montreal, including St. Lambert's Church.

Because the police still do not take Tempes' theory of a serial killer seriously, Tempe investigates the area around St. Lambert late in the evening and comes across another body in a plastic bag. The next morning she takes her colleagues from the police there. It turns out that this corpse was also beheaded, but the head is missing. It also seems to have been on the site for a long time. The head appears a little later, however, when a stranger breaks into the courtyard of Teme's apartment. When Tempe calls the police, they find the rotten head of the corpse, which is identified as Grace Damas.

Tempe searches the police database for other similar cases and finds more victims. She also recognizes a pattern: three of the victims lived six stops away from the Berri-UQAM station, near which St. Jacques is located. Several victims had either advertised an apartment for sale or their neighbors and families. After a phone call with a friend in the United States who works as a sex crime specialist, Tempe is more convinced than ever that they are dealing with a serial killer. The phone call finally seems to have something to do with the police in Montreal, because a few days a task force is set up to capture the serial killer, which Tempe should also belong to.

Meanwhile, Tempe worries about Gabby, who has disappeared again. While searching for Gabby, she reconnects with the prostitutes, which eventually leads her to the apartment of the creepy client she believes is Gabby's stalker. Then events roll over: The next day, after working on the doorknob of her apartment door, she finds Gabby's ID and a section of the city map of Montreal with a cross on it. Temper's concerns about Gabby are confirmed, because the police find Gabby's body at the location marked on the city map. Temper's dismay heightened when the police found a photo of Tempe and her daughter Katy on Gabby's body and Katy - actually far away at college in the USA - announced a visit to Montreal.

The apartment of Gabby's alleged stalker who found Tempe is assigned to a man named Tanguay, who is now also wanted as a suspect. The police laboratory also found that the make of the glove found in the home of the first suspect, St. Jacques, matched the glove in Gabby's grave.

Meanwhile, Tempe follows another lead that she discovered in the files: The murderer must be familiar with anatomy and used a kitchen saw to dismember the corpses. She also found out that victim Grace Damas used to work in a butcher's shop. Tempe drives to the butcher's shop and learns that another butcher's employee has disappeared at the same time as Grace Damas: Leo Fortier.

When the suspect Tanguay was caught by the police shortly afterwards, everyone believed that the case was resolved. Tempe remains skeptical, however, and comes up with the idea of ​​comparing Tanguay's dentition with the bite marks on a hamburger in Rue Berger. Since they do not agree, she concludes that Tanguay and St. Jacques, the tenant of the Rue Berger apartment, cannot be one and the same person and that the serial killer may continue to roam free. She continues to suspect that Leo Fortier is the killer. Through a phone call with Fortier's former psychiatrist in prison, she also finds out that Fortier is dangerous. Before she can call Homicide Detective Ryan, she is mugged at her apartment. However, she can resist being killed until the police arrive.

As it turns out, the man in her apartment is actually Leo Fortier aka St. Jacques, the serial killer. He has been suspicious of sexual harassment for years. His colleague Grace Damas, with whom he had an affair, was his first murder victim. In order to kill and dismember or hide his victims, Fortier used the area of ​​the abandoned St. Lambert Church, because his uncle had access to the area there. Tempe has to go to the hospital for a while, where she learns that nothing has happened to her daughter Katy.

The novel ends with Tempe and her daughter Katy on vacation. Tempe receives a letter from her police colleague Luc Claudel, who has been very reluctant to work with her so far, in which he appreciates her good work.

characters

  • Temperance 'Tempe' Brennan: forensic anthropologist who works alternately in Charlotte, USA and Montreal, Canada. In Montreal, she is employed as a consultant for the Laboratoire de Médicine Légale to work on cases where only bones can be found
  • Gabby: Anthropologist, fellow student of Tempe in the 1970s, and longtime friend in Montreal
  • Katy: Tempe's divorced daughter, college in the US
  • Pierre LaManche: Director of the Laboratoire de Médicine Légale in Montreal, for which Tempe works
  • Detective Luc Claudel of the Quebec Police Department Homicide, rather skeptical to hostile towards Tempe
  • Lt. Detective Andrew Ryan of the Quebec Police Department Homicide, supports and later became friends with Teme

shape

The author, like her fictional character Tempe Brennan, is a forensic anthropologist at the Forensic Institute of Montreal . Her novels are characterized by detailed and well-founded descriptions of the work of a forensic anthropologist at crime scenes and at the dissection table. The description of the murder victims and the crime scenes, including the nauseating aspects of the rotting bodies, occupies a large space in the forensic detective novels. However, the depiction of the putrefaction is not just purely for the sake of the effect. Reichs uses various techniques to ironically distance himself from the portrayed. The main character Tempe Brennan often uses black humor to deal with the violence and death around her. Reichs also used puns for the titles of their crime novels, such as: B. Déja Dead (Eng. 'Already dead'). At the same time, however, it is emphasized again and again that the main character has strong empathy with those killed. The particular mix of forensic science and insane criminals was also identified as the recipe for success in both Reichs' novels and television series like CSI in the 1990s and 200s.

Further elements of the crime novel by Kathy Reichs are the contrast between the scientific investigation methods on the one hand and the instinct of the main character, who repeatedly follows her intuition on her own. The scene in which Tempe is looking for a corpse during a thunderstorm on the grounds of St. Lambert's Church also hints at elements from the horror novel.

Position in literary history

Together with Patricia Cornwell , Kathy Reichs has helped the forensic detective novel become very popular since the 1990s. Before Cornwall and Reichs, however, there were other authors who dealt with forensics: The novel Romance of Poisons from 1903 by Robert Cromie and TS Wilson contains microbiological and toxicological studies. In No Escape from 1983 by Sarah Kemp there was finally with forensic doctor Dr. Tina May a first female character. The forensic crime novels by Kathy Reichs also pick up on the tradition of hardboiled detectives as with Raymond Chandler , because Temperance Brennan appears as a loner who is more successful in her job than in her private life.

reception

Déjà Dead was compared to the already successful forensic crime novels by Patricia Cornwell when it was published and was especially praised for the knowledgeable portrayal of the work of a forensic anthropologist. Together with Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs is seen as the main exponent of the forensic crime novel, which has been popular since the 1990s.

Déjà Dead won the 1998 Canada Crime Writers Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Publication and has been translated into over 15 languages.

Kathy Reichs' forensic crime novels also served as inspiration for the television series Bones . Although the main character in Bones is also called Temperance Brennan, aspects from Kathy Reich's own life were used as models for the television series, not so much the characters and the storylines of the novels.

literature

Text output

Secondary literature

  • Dorothee Birke, Stella Butter, Marion Gymnich: Speaking bodies: Kathy Reichs . In: Vera Nünning (ed.): The American and British crime novel. Genres - developments - model interpretations . Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 2008, ISBN 978-3-86821-071-2 , pp. 135-149.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dorothee Birke, Stella Butter, Marion Gymnich: Speaking body: Kathy Reichs . In: Vera Nünning (ed.): The American and British crime novel. Genres - developments - model interpretations . Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 2008, ISBN 978-3-86821-071-2 , pp. 141-143.
  2. ↑ Stephen Knight: Crime Fiction since 1800. Detection, Death, Diversity , 2nd edition. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-230-58074-9 , p. 217.
  3. ^ Dorothee Birke, Stella Butter, Marion Gymnich: Speaking body: Kathy Reichs . In: Vera Nünning (ed.): The American and British crime novel. Genres - developments - model interpretations . Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 2008, ISBN 978-3-86821-071-2 , pp. 144-146.
  4. ^ Dorothee Birke, Stella Butter, Marion Gymnich: Speaking body: Kathy Reichs . In: Vera Nünning (ed.): The American and British crime novel. Genres - developments - model interpretations . Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 2008, ISBN 978-3-86821-071-2 , pp. 136-137.
  5. ^ Marilyn Stasio: Crime . In: The New York Times , August 24, 1997, accessed August 11, 2019.
  6. ^ Dorothee Birke, Stella Butter, Marion Gymnich: Speaking body: Kathy Reichs . In: Vera Nünning (ed.): The American and British crime novel. Genres - developments - model interpretations . Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 2008, ISBN 978-3-86821-071-2 , p. 135.
  7. ↑ Canada Crime Writers: Arthur Ellis Award - list of Best First Novel , archived from the original on May 29, 2010.
  8. ^ Official website of Kathy Reichs , last accessed on August 14, 2019.