I went on a binge and read these three Kathy Reichs novels, Death du Jour, Deadly Decisions and Bare Bones. That's the order in which she wrote them (with a few others in between) and the others in which I read them. Reading one author's books close together like this always makes me think more about style than content.
Here are some things that bothered me about Reichs writing about Montreal. For one thing, she kept calling it Quebec Province in the first two books. Who the hell calls it that? It's the province of Quebec. We don't live in... Africa. That's the only place I can think of where they refer to anything as _____ Province. Luckily, she fixes that by the third one I read. She also refers to going to Lafleur's as going to Lafleur. Yes, the sign says Lafleur. If you are an anglo living in Montreal, the " 's" is implied. At any rate, more annoying, and bad misinformation for tourists, she orders a hot dog by calling it a chien chaud.
I have lived in this province for four years. I go to our local hot dog joint all the time, in a city much more French than Montreal. I order a hot dog steamé. Or, sometimes I order toasté. That's steamed or toasted to the rest of us. Anglos in Montreal order steamies. And if I want a rootbeer, I order a rootbeer. A friend of mine once tried to order a racinette, and the girl at the counter didn't know what he was talking about. The same goes for milkshake. It may say lait battu on the sign, but order a milkshake au fraise.
Now that I have that off my chest, I want to point out a couple of cheap tricks. In Death du Jour, the cult is heading towards their Guardian Angel, and she's evil. This is a spoiler, by the way. They're going to Ange Guardien, a little town between Sherbrooke and Montreal. Um. Yeah. I am shaking my head.
The other thing that bothers me is that this forensic anthropologist gets into all kinds of ridiculous trouble, which usually leads to someone else getting shot or getting herself bashed over the head. She's a forensic anthropologist. I have a hard enough time believing that of an FBI agent.
Therein lies the true flaw. And I'm not even getting into her main character being called "Tempe" (say it Temp-ee).
Sure, they're a good read and the mysteries are good, and sometimes difficult to figure out (except Bare Bones - I didn't have the why, but I definitely had the who pegged from about 40 pages in), but the other flaws made me so angry I wanted to throw the book at the wall. And, at least once, I did. I refrained with the other two, since they were library books.