Tess Gerritsen has written nine books in this medical thriller series, with Maura Isles as medical examiner and Jane Rizzole as a detective with the homicide unit of the Boston Police Department.. The books contain equal amounts of medicine and thriller.
Vanish, her latest novel, like Body Double, has two stories which at first seem parallel but do eventually meet and the themes link up. The two themes in Vanish start quite separately, to the extent that one, the journey of Mila through enforced underage prostitution, is told in the first person and starts and ends the book where the other, the hostage story and its aftermath, is told in the third person, with Rizz and Maura as main characters.
Vanish is a thriller which holds the reader's attention from start to finish. It begins its hold from the time that Maura, as medical examiner, finds that one of the body bags in the morgue holds a corpse that moves and opens its eyes. Gerritsen likes startling openings. Body Double's first significant event is the discovery by Maura that the corpse in the car in front of her house is herself, or someone exactly like her.
The medical descriptions contain horrifying details. The way the pathologists cuts through the various parts of the dead body and what they do with the parts leave the reader somewhat breathless, but it has become the fashion with other writers who have medical examiners as detectives not to hold back from gruesome details in their descriptions.
There is a romantic/human dimension with Jane, the detective, and her husband Gabriel, an agent with the FBI. Jane's pregnancy and her baby's imminent birth provide scenes where heavy contractions give an unusual backcloth to the hostage scenes.
Gerritsen was moved to start writing medical thrillers by the unverified story
told to her by a reporter. Of Russian orphans who disappeared from the streets
of Moscow and were shipped abroad as organ donors. The story prompted her to
write about similar frightening possibilities which have a ring of truth and,
in the modern world, could be true. Both Body Double and Vanish have plots which
fascinate and appeal. You will have to read them to find out more and be prepared
for the fact that you may find it impossible to put the book down.
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R osemary Brown
Tess has written roughly one book a year since 1996. Harvest, Life Support,
Bloodstream, Gravity, The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double,
Vanish