This book starts a little slow - but once you get acclimated to the French (continuous expressions in French and then translated), you are glad you stuck with it. Similar to Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta, Temperance Brennan solves murders by looking at remains - human remains.
Moving to Quebec from North Carolina to leave a troubled marriage and an alcoholic past, she takes a job as a forensic anthropologiest with the police. Temperance isn't an investigator, but she's stubborn and willing to take on the investiation if she doesn't get cooperation from the police. She puts together conclusions that the police are reluctant to jump to. The story begins with human remains found by grounds workers - remains that had been dismembered and distributed among garbage bags (and it gets more grisley from here.) This plucks a memory for her. As the murders ensue, a pattern immerges to her - again police don't see it.
At the same time, a friend from grad school who is doing some research with street prostitutes becomes terrified of someone she meets on the street. At times I found her secrecy annoying, but Temperance comes to think the two issues might be related.
The plot is engaging and griping, but the descriptions get a bit tedious and some plots just seem contrived. Who would go into an overgrown area at night to investigate - in a thunderstorm, with a bad flashlight? The police also come off looking dumb - not being able to put 2 + 2 together. So an X marked on a map is left to Temperance, our reckless lone crusader, to pursue (enter the thunderstorm and bad flashlight.)
The book seems to foreshadow to one character being the killer, but it turns in another direction and our killer is revealed with no foreshadowing. Completely out of the blue. As a person who likes to solve the murder along with the protagonist, this was annoyinng.
Though not a perfect first book - the story and the character were compelling and I'll go back for more.
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