I read Déja Dead by Kathy Reichs

So, working in a bookstore as I do, I get a lot more exposure to popular fiction than I did as an English/French major at a small liberal arts college. I've been shelving bestsellers the past few weeks, and I noticed the newest Reichs book, partly because it's got a nice shiny cover. The blurb says the series is the inspiration for the tv show Bones, which I know friends of mine adore. I caught the last ten minutes or so of last Tuesday's episode, and it was interesting enough. Being more inclined to books than television, I picked up the first in the series, just to see if it was something I should get into.

From what I could tell from my short exposure to the show, the books are drastically different. For one thing, in the books, the heroine is called "Tempe" instead of "Bones", when people use her nickname. The first one is set in Montreal, not Washington D.C. There's no Booth, no Zach, no Hodge or Angela (these are the things I pick up from listening to my friends). Temperance Brennan in the books is a lonely, somewhat angry woman with a lot more issues than Emily Deschanel's Bones, what with the alcoholism, the marriage on the rocks, the chauvinistic co-workers, and the almost complete lack of a social life. On the television show, she seemed more the mad scientist type: brilliant, but slightly naïve, in a sweet sort of way. Temperance Brennan of the book gets herself into a lot of dangerous situations in Déja Dead, but it seems like it's less because she's got a hankering for justice and more because she can't find much to live for. Passion, sure, but the self-destructive channeling of it gets Brennan stalked and almost killed in Déja Dead.

Given the choice between an empowered but self-endangering woman and a woman whose head is so deep in her work that she has to be saved from burning herself on hot coffee, I'm more likely to take Bones over Tempe. In both cases, Brennan tends to rely on the men around her to avert the consequences of her actions, but at least Booth isn't a jerk the way Claudel is; Bones seems to enjoy her life more. It's also interesting to see a female mad scientist: other women dedicated to their work retain a social sharpness verging on the brusque (Scully from The X-Files) comes to mind. Deschanel's vague loopiness is endearing, and I like Booth more than any of the men I've encountered in the books.

So saying this, of course, I ended up picking up one of the other books, which I'd taken out from the library just in case. I can only hope that Tempe doesn't decide to scramble off on any life-endangering trips down Prostitution Row in Fatal Voyage. Meanwhile, I might tune in on an occasional Tuesday to cleanse the palate with a more cheerful Temperance Brennan.