Hello everyone!
I'm back with a book review, although granted I hadn't actually decided WHICH book I was going to talk about in this blog post tonight until the moment I sat down to type the Twitter announcement.
I'm like that sometimes. I read a lot, but I don't always write EVERYTHING down.
Which means that, sometimes, I can have a difficult moment or two cracking through the piles of information inside my brain and sifting through the lot so that I can find something that would be worth while. And I'm not evn sure I did find it, but oh well.
In any event, because I recently started rereading a few series I'd already finished back in the day, I figured I might as well talk about a book that was very close to mein terms of how well I remember what was going on inside it.
Since I never did make any notes about it, might as well get it out in the open as fast as humanly possible, right?
Right.
And, since I'd already written about one book by the same author, it makes sense. I'm talking about The Surgeon.
Written by Tess Gerritsen, it's the very first book in her Rizzoli and Isles series which has since spawned more than ten of them (I think the exact number might be eleven or perhaps even more?), and they keep reeling readers back in.
Rizzoli and Isles, that is.
Although in The Surgeon, we don't actually get to meet Maura Isles, medical examiner, yet.
No, this is the book about Jane Rizzoli and how she came to be who she is, what makes her tick, and the other supporting characters who will all, at one time or another, make appearances in subsequent books.
Of course, it's not just about Jane, really.
The book actually begins a little bit helter-skelter as we get snapshots of the different people that we'll be following throughout its pages: these would be Detective Jane Rizzoli of the Boston P.D., Detective Thomas Moore, of the same department, Doctor Catherine Cordell, trauma surgeon, and what seem to be diary entries, or better yet insight into the mind of a person who dictates his thoughts.
You see, dor everyone else we get a third-person narrative and sentences like 'Jane knew this look, it led to trouble', etc.
For this guy, we get 'I have seen how she walks across the street'.
You get the idea.
What happens is this: Boston's Homicide Unit bites off more than they can chew with a string of murders that seem to make no sense whatsoever at the beginning of the book: they are all of women, in their own homes, but the most disturbing thing of all is that they had all had their uterus removed by surgical incision.
Yeahhh.
Enter Thomas Moore, stage left, who is the primary focus of the book until the entrance of Jane Rizzoli, stage right.
The two of them butt heads almost as often as they are pals; see, Jane grew up as the only girl in a family of boys and in a family where, generally speaking, she was always undermined and talked down upon and everyone thought she couldn't do things because she was a girl. Now in Homicide, as the only female detective, she needs to prover herself time and time again to all the male cops around her who think she can't handle the job.
It's tough, being Jane.
But back to the investigation.
The murders of the women seem unconnected until Jane notices that the first victim's necklace ended up on the second victim, and the second's bracelent on the third ... you can see where I'm going with this.
Add in the break of a similar case which had happened two years ago, to none other than Dr. Cordell, and they might even have a foundation to stand on.
Except, problem: the guy who did it to Catherine? She shot him dead.
The investigation hits a wall there until Moore has the brilliant idea of putting her into a state of hypnosis, during which she reveals that she had heard, but apparently couldn't recall this bit of memry because of the date rape drug which had been used on her, another voice speaking in her house.
Her perp had had a companion with him.
This makes everything a whole new ballpark as it means that the original murderer's partner is on the loose and apparently stalking Cordell, as his ultimate prize: the one that got away.
Weavig throughout this whole shebang is also personal drama: Jane and her obnoxious family (who I want to punch, every single one of them), her relationships (or lack there-of) in the department, Thomas and Jane's friendship, and mostly Thomas and his relationship with Catherine.
See, Catherine is an attractive red-head. And she likes handsome, salt-and-pepper hair Saint Thomas.
Which makes the case personal for him.
Unfortunately for our hero, he doesn't get to do a lot of the knight in shinning armour impression as Catherine is finally abducted by the killer they had nicknamed 'Surgeon', and the department is scrambling to find her.
Everyone, that is, except Jane Rizzoli.
Technically, Jane had been taken off the case after they'd gone after another suspect whom she'd ended up shooting despite what appeared to be hands in the air for surrender. But, being an intelligent woman and all that, she actually is the only one to deduce just where our Surgeon is hiding.
Her intelligence only goes so far, though.
She does get to his lair - only to get herself captured and almost killed, but luckily Catherine is handy enough with a gun and shoots him.
The book ends with the Surgeon in prison, Jane a sort-of hero, and Thomas ending up marrying Catherine.
And that, ladies and gents, is jus the start of the story.
I didn't think I'd be able to get into these books, at first. Tess Gerritsen writes medical thriller novels that aren't usually up my alley. I prefer things which my overactive imagination won't gobble up and spit back out in warped dimensions. But my dad is a sucker for these things and he has the whole collection on his shelves, so one time during summer vacation, I nosed around a book, to check it out.
Devoured it, and needed to read them, start to finish.
I loved them, even though I sometimes want to smack some people SO. BADLY. With chairs, natch. It's a good thing I'm not doing book two's review tonight because I'm still annoyed with it.
Another time, when I'm calmer!
Although ... maybe reading about serial killers and rapists when I'm all alone in the house with my eighty+ grandmother wasn't the brightest idea I've ever had.
xx
*image not mine
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