Book Review: The Sinner by Tess Gerritsen

Another review of a book from Tess Gerritsen! I know, I know, variation is important and all that but I wanted to finish reading all the books in the Rizzoli and Isles series before my summer vacation was over and I did so there will be some more of these coming!

The Sinner is the third book in the series and by now I have started to expect how the book is set up. The two previous books The Surgeon and The Apprentice are set during the summer and throughout the book they talk about how hot it is. In comparison, The Sinner is set during the winter and on almost every page there will be a mention of how cold it is.

I always like to add what is written on the back of the book (or as it is usually with the Kindle, on the first few pages of the book).

They want us to know why they died...  

Within the walls of a cloistered convent, a scene of unspeakable carnage is discovered. On the snow lie two nuns, one dead, one critically injured – victims of a seemingly motiveless, brutally savage attack. 

Doctor Maura Isles’ autopsy of the murder victim yields a shocking surprise, but the case takes a disturbing twist. The body of another woman has been found. And someone has gone to a lot trouble to remove her face, hands and feet.  

As long buried secrets are revealed Dr. Isles and Detective Jane Rizzoli find themselves part of a terrifying investigation that leads to a shocking realization of the killer’s identity..

Sounds interesting, and let me tell you, it really was! After reading The Surgeon and The Apprentice right after each other I was a bit sick of the story, it was just so repetitive. The Sinner however, kicks everything back into action.

As I mentioned earlier, the story is set in the winter and there is a lot of description of the cold and just the weather in general. The change in season in comparative to the first two books is not the only change that we get to experience in this book, the first two books were focused on Jane Rizzoli but The Sinner is focused on Dr. Maura Isles' life instead, it is a nice change and we get a better look into Maura's life. That doesn't mean that we don't get to follow Jane around as well.

And to some quotes from the book, in these quotes, she is always Dr. Maura Isles.

The morning’s snowfall had turned into a treacherous mix of both snow and sleet, and the city plows were nowhere in sight.

The wind blew, rattling the windows, and the door creaked as though invisible hands were tugging at it, desperate to get in. Rizzoli's lips had chilled to blue, and her face had taken on a corpse like pallor, but she showed no intention of seeking a warmer room. That was Rizzoli, too stubborn to be the first to capitulate. To admit she had reached her limit.

For an instant, their gazes met through the window. She saw a lean and striking face, a head of black hair, ruffled by the wind. And she caught a glimpse of white, tucked beneath the raised collar of his black coat.

She heard a creak, and felt the whisper of movement, of another presence in the room. The hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood up and she gave a laugh. ‘God, Jane, don't sneak up on me like...’ Turning, her voice died in mid-sentence. No one was there. For a moment she didn't move, didn't breathe, just stared at empty space. Vacant air, polished floor.

She had chosen this suburb of Brookline, just west of Boston, because of the sense of security she felt in its quiet, treelined streets.

As before in Tess Gerritsen novels, the murder cases and the lives of the main characters are somehow connected. In The Sinner it is quite visible both with Jane Rizzoli and with Maura Isles.

I really liked this book and found that it actually showed that Tess Gerritsen talent really grew between the books. I would as well definitely recommend for you to read The Sinner, especially if you have read the first two books and were quite bored when reading the second book (The Apprentice) since The Sinner doesn't dwell on the past as much as The Apprentice.

Bisous

Book Review: The Apprentice by Tess Gerritsen

The Apprentice is the second book in the Rizzoli and Isles series and if you have watched the Rizzoli and Isles tv-show reading The Apprentice is just like watching the pilot of the tv-show. At certain times when I was reading the book I wasn't sure if I had read the book before or not because of the similarities between the book and the tv-show.

The first book The Surgeon (reviewed here) does not include Dr. Maura Isles but she is introduced in The Apprentice. 

I am not the only one of my kind who walks this earth. Somewhere, there is another. And he waits for me… The Surgeon has been locked up for a year but his chilling legacy still haunts the city, and especially Boston detective Jane Rizzoli. But now a new killer is at work and Rizzoli senses something horrifyingly familiar about him.

Then the FBI starts taking an interest in the investigation and Rizzoli begins to wonder just what makes this case so different and so dangerous?

But then the unthinkable happens: the Surgeon escapes. And suddenly there are two twisted killers on the loose – master and apprentice… 

While I was reading the book I wasn't really sure if I liked it or not, and even now I am still not sure. I think it was because how similar it was to the Pilot of Rizzoli and Isles that I somehow didn't get to enjoy the book as much as I probably would have if I hadn't known the plot.

There are several new important characters introduced in The Apprentice, as I mentioned previously Dr. Maura Isles is introduced as well as the FBI agent Gabriel Dean. 

The book is set up as Tess Gerritsen usually sets up her books, there main story is written in third person and then there are couple of chapters written in first person that are from some outsiders part of the story.

And of course some quotes, I love quotes to see how the book is written. 

"Today I watched a man die." 

"The blood pours from his chest like holy water from a sacred spring. I press my palm to the wound, bathing my skin in that liquid warmth, and blood coats my hand like a scarlet glove."

"But this is not his work. Warren Hoyt is safely locked away in a place he can’t escape. I know, because I put the bastard there myself."

"Rizzoli brought home a pizza from the deli around the corner and excavated an ancient head of lettuce from the bottom of her refrigerator vegetable bin. She peeled off brown leaves until she reached the barely edible core. It was a pale and unappetizing salad, which she ate out of duty and not for pleasure."

"Happy people are self-contained; they breathe different air and are subject to different laws of gravity."

"The question, asked so softly, made her fall silent. She resented his probing. Resented, most of all, that he’d recognized a truth she could not admit. Warren Hoyt had left scars. All she had to do was look down at her hands to be reminded of the damage he’d inflicted. But the worst damage was not physical. What she had lost, in that dark basement last summer, was her sense of invincibility. Her sense of confidence. Warren Hoyt had taught her how vulnerable she really was."

"‘It’s just like last summer,’ murmured Marquette, still staring at the trees. ‘The Surgeon started killing around this time, too.’ ‘It’s the heat,’ said Rizzoli as she reached for her cell phone. ‘It brings the monsters out.’"

Even if I am not sure if I love this book or not I still would recommend it, mostly because the Rizzoli and Isles book series is great and this book is important for the flow of the rest of the series.

Bisous

Book Review: The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen

I knew when I had the time to start reading novels again I needed to pick one up from Tess Gerritsen! I decided to start from the beginning of the Rizzoli and Isles series and therefore chose The Surgeon. I was not at all disappointed! I inhaled the book in an afternoon and wanted more (and thus downloaded on my kindle The Apprentice)! Right there and then, I decided that I was going to read all of the Rizzoli and Isles books this summer! A summer of crime novels! At the moment there are ten books in the series, the eleventh book will come out late 2014/early 2015. I have already reviewed Body Double (the fourth novel) and I plan on reviewing the rest of the books as well!

Back to The Surgeon, the back of the book (or well, the front of the kindle book) the plot of the book is described this way:

In Boston, there’s a killer on the loose…
A killer who targets lone women and performs terrifying ritualistic acts of torture on them before finishing them off. His surgical skills lead police to suspect he is a physician who, instead of saving lives, takes them. But as homicide detective Thomas Moore and his partner Jane Rizzoli begin their investigation, they make a startling discovery. Closely linked to these killings is Catherine Cordell, a beautiful doctor with a mysterious past. Two years ago she was subjected to a horrifying rape, and shot her attacker dead.
Now, the man she believes she killed seems to be stalking her once again. And this time he knows exactly where to find her…

The Surgeon introduces some of the main characters that are in the Rizzoli and Isles series, we get introduced to Jane Rizzoli and her family and some of the detectives (Frost, Crow, Moore). Dr. Isles isn't introduced until in the second novel The Apprentice.

The plot is great, if you have watched the Rizzoli and Isles tv-series you might recognize it since the first episode (in season one) is based on The Surgeon and The Apprentice.

The book is a mixture of first person narrative and third person narrative. The first person narrative is only from the killer perspective and the rest is in third person. I do prefer reading a novel when it is in third narrative but the first narrative wasn't bad at all. Firstly, there wasn't too much of it and secondly it wasn't a long worded ramble.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Today they will find her body"

That was the first sentence of the book, it was a part of the first narrative section and set the voice to the rest of the novel.

"Elena Ortiz had lived long enough to see her own blood spurt from her neck and hit the wall in a machine-gun spray of red. She had lived long enough to aspirate blood into her severed trachea, to hear it gurgle in her lungs, to cough it out in explosive bursts of crimson phlegm."

I found that this book had a lot of gore and blood talk, and if I hear/read the word vein couple of times I start to become a little light headed and that is how I felt during some parts of the novel.

"This was now a high-profile case. Two days ago, the headline hit the front page of the local tabloid: ‘The Surgeon Cuts Again.’ Thanks to the Boston Herald, their unsub had his own moniker, and even the cops were using it. The Surgeon."

I just really like when the mention the title of the book in the novel and I notice it!

"She'd been deprived of love so long that she’d lost all sense of hunger. Only now, as every part of her came alive, did she remember what desire felt like, and her lips sought his with the eagerness of a starved woman."

And a cliché quote that I found to be a bit too much and awkward!

All in all I loved this book, and I can't wait to read the rest of the Rizzoli and Isles series that Tess Gerritsen has written.

Bisous

Book Review: Body Double by Tess Gerritsen

I always love reviewing books that I loved reading! Body Double by Tess Gerritsen is a great book. It is a great crime novel and it is just thrilling. I completely recommend this book to anyone that would like to read a crime novel! I picked it up because the tv-show Rizzoli and Isles is based on these books, I LOVE Rizzoli and Isles and I will definitely read some more of these books!

But back to Body Double, the synopsis of the book (as written on the back cover):

"As the scalpel begins to cut my blood runs cold. I look like her. Exactly like her..."  

Maura Isles deals with death. As a pathologist in downtown Boston, she has seen more then her share of corpses. But never before has the body on the medical examiner's table been her own.
There can be no denying the evidence though. The dead woman is her mirror image right down to the most intimate physical details. Even more chilling is the discovery that they share the same birth date and blood type.
Then a DNA test confirms that Maura's mysterious double is indeed her twin sister, and suddenly an already bizarre murder investigation becomes a disturbing journey into a past full of dark and deadly secrets...

Isn't that just so intriguing! The novel has so much suspense in it without being over the top! Just amazing. The characters are well written and even the smallest character have enough back-story to be believable.

I highlighted tons of quotes on my kindle, there were just so many sentences that I loved! But to narrow it down I chose five that I believe gives and insight into the story and demonstrates how it is written!

That's not healthy, she thought as she sat at an outdoor café, savoring one last cup of espresso and a strawberry tart. Page 18

That's three hours I could have spent walking alone the Seine, she thought as she sat disgruntled in Charles de Gaulle. Three hours I could have wandered the Marais or poked around in Les Halles. Page 18

Even from across the lawn, Maura could recognize homicide detective Jane Rizzoli. Now eight months pregnant, the petite Rizzoli looked like a ripe pear in a pantsuit. Page 20

She had seen her share of horrors in this lab, had gazed at flesh in every stage of decay, at bodies so damaged by fire or trauma that the remains could scarcely be categorized as human. The woman on the table was, in the scope of her experience, remarkably intact. The blood had been washed away, and the bullet's entry wound, in the left scalp, was obscured by her dark hair. Page 39  

There were no pictures taken in the hospital, none of her mother in pregnancy. Just this sudden, sharp image of Ginny smiling in the sunshine, holding her instant baby. She thought of another dark-haired baby, held in another mother's arms. Perhaps, on that very same day, a proud father in another town had snapped off a photo of his new daughter. A girl named Anna. Page 86

The book is mostly written in third person but has some sentences in first person, those sentences are inner monologue but they aren't preachy or at all annoying and I usually HATE inner monologue and first person yapping.

All in all, I would definitely recommend this book and it is highly likely that I will pick up another one of Tess Gerritsen novels soon!

Bisous