Death Du Jour by Kathy Reichs

Interesting. There are two distinct plot layers and they only obliquely get tied together, both related to religion - maybe there are more connections than I thought.

The background plot is the one I remembered. This one opens the book as Tempe digs through the dirt beneath the floor in a long abandoned Catholic church for the remains of a nun buried there. The body needs to be found and identified so they can proceed with the process of her beatification. I'm not sure why they have to have the body to make her a saint, but that's why they are digging her up. Only (of course) she wasn't where she was supposed to be - you'd think that dead people would just stay where you bury them, but it doesn't work out that way much in stories in this genre.

Did I forget to mention that it is March - Spring in North Carolina, in Montreal, not so much. Finally, it occurs to Tempe to ask the World's Oldest Living Nun (who is ferrying hot tea out to them) if she knows anything about the situation. "Oh, yeah," she says. "They were doing something or other about something back in 1911 and moved her." Sure enough, old nun was right on target and they find the would-be saint.

Everything is dug out and boxed up and sent to the lab. Where the next day Tempe begins sifting and sorting through everything. She picks up the skull and looks at it and says, "Uh oh." She calls a colleague over to take a look. He says, "Uh oh." And that is the end of that for another two hundred pages.

I'm going to definitely have to watch out for that sort of thing. Kind of a cheesy trick, but it worked - on me, at least. Every time Elizabeth Nicolet was mentioned I would speculate again about what the big "uh oh" could possibly be. I actually had guessed, but it might not have been as obvious to a reader twenty years ago.

The main plot has to do with a bizarre and murderous cult, which, curiously, had branches in North Carolina and Montreal. That was one of the oddest things about this bunch was that the guy that you assume is the big bad turns out to be just the local franchisee, very odd.

Now for a brief look at the important part, the continuing story. It is clear that the Tempe/Ryan thing is going to happen. In the first one Tempe's girlhood friend, Gabby, falls victim to the serial killer. In this one Tempe's sister, Harry, is the victim - but Tempe saves her in time. And - Tempe's cat is not dead - I figure there is enough angst in this one without leaving you in suspense on that point.