Book Review

The things we keep

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By Ande Jacobson

Tess Gerritsen’s seventh Rizzoli & Isles book, The Keepsake, was first released in 2008. Gerritsen digs even further into her anthropology background branching off into the sub-specialties of Archeology and Egyptology when a mummy discovered at a local museum turns out to be not at all what it seems. As always in this series the past predicts the future, although in this perplexing case, far more secrets than usual are uncovered. The story begins with a quote from Dr. Jonathan Elias, Egyptologist:

“Every mummy is an exploration, an undiscovered continent that you’re visiting for the very first time.”

Continue reading →

Is evil born or made?

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By Ande Jacobson

Tess Gerritsen’s sixth Rizzoli & Isles book, The Mephisto Club, was first released in 2006. This time, Gerritsen uses her Stanford undergraduate degree in anthropology to explore ancient myths through texts predating the major monotheistic religious artifacts and scriptures. This book is a dark story, but the academic exploration is fascinating. The investigators cross paths with an eccentric group of sleuths with an international presence who happen to be co-located at the site of a gruesome murder. As is often the case in this series, Gerritsen weaves seemingly disconnected threads together, introducing readers to key characters before the events of the investigation take place. Continue reading →

The hidden and the hiding

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By Ande Jacobson

Tess Gerritsen’s fifth Rizzoli & Isles book, Vanish, was first released in 2005. Like the previous books in the series, this one follows seemingly separate storylines that intersect in disturbing ways, this time tackling human trafficking and abuses by the powerful.

Gerritsen jumps into the first arc of the main story without a prologue. The story opens in the past in Mexico narrated by Mila. Mila is a young Russian immigrant who thought she was going to a land of opportunity, but instead she finds herself in a nightmare. She’s trapped with several other young women in the desert in Mexico traveling north to the U.S. What she doesn’t know until she gets there is that she and her companions will be forced into a type of slavery that is far too common. Continue reading →

Double take

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By Ande Jacobson

Tess Gerritsen’s fourth Rizzoli & Isles book, Body Double, came out in 2004. Like each previous book, we learn more of the main characters’ back story, this time that of Maura Isles. Readers already knew some of the basics from previous books including the fact that she was adopted, her history before moving to Boston, the fact that she was married, but they didn’t know much about how and why she’d been adopted or anything at all about her birth mother. This book changes all of that in a vivid and sometimes terrifying way. The story’s prologue starts out sweet, in the past, but it quickly turns into a nightmare that seems disconnected from the present until the pieces start coming together. In the present, there’s a murder of course, but this time there’s also a fair amount of misdirection from the start. Continue reading →

‘A Firehose of Falsehood’ is a must read!

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By Ande Jacobson

A brilliant new book entitled A Firehose of Falsehood: The Story of Disinformation written by Teri Kanefield and illustrated by Pat Dorian is finally available to all (as of 13 February 2024). You can buy your copy at your favorite brick and mortar bookseller, order it online, or borrow it from your local library. In August 2023, I had the opportunity to review a pre-publication copy of this stunning work, and it packed a punch. I more recently received a pre-publication hardcover copy of the book which I was eager to see. Although it was the same material as the digital version I previously reviewed, it was even more gripping in hardcover. This is a must-read book for everyone. A Firehose of Falsehood is a graphic novel, and as such, the illustrations are an integral and powerful part of the story. Kanefield wrote the informative and entertaining prose, and Dorian’s breathtaking four-color illustrations make this book also a work of art. Continue reading →

The dangers behind the walls

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By Ande Jacobson

Keeping on her yearly schedule, Tess Gerritsen’s third book in the Rizzoli & Isles series, The Sinner, first appeared in August 2003. Gerritsen goes in a new direction this time digging deeper in the personal lives of Detective Jane Rizzoli and Dr. Maura Isles. Maura’s ex-husband, Victor Banks, is also a doctor though not a medical examiner. Victor features prominently in this story, and their complicated history intrudes on Maura’s work this time. Of course there are murders to solve, the first one of a nun killed in Graystones Abbey, the home of a sequestered order. Two nuns were attacked, one died at the scene, the other was taken to the hospital, but the story doesn’t end there. There are some other seemingly disconnected murders across a surprisingly wide region. The story has tentacles that reach across states and across the world in surprising ways. Gerritsen is masterful in her storytelling, interweaving the professional and personal lives of her characters, and as always the details matter. Continue reading →

Warren Hoyt’s story continues …

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By Ande Jacobson

One year after the first book in the series was released, Tess Gerritsen’s second work in the Rizzoli & Isles series dropped in August 2002. The Apprentice picks up where The Surgeon left off with the same heart-stopping action and mind-bending puzzles that Gerritsen’s mystery/thrillers are known for. Gerritsen introduced Warren Hoyt, a skilled and pathological serial killer, in the first book. He’s in prison, but a new series of crimes that reek of his signature come to light. Detective Rizzoli and her team are immediately engaged, and so is Detective Vince Korsak in Newton, a Boston suburb and a different jurisdiction than Rizzoli’s territory. FBI Agent Gabriel Dean also appears for some unknown reason. Other parts of the federal government also kibitz later in the story causing additional confusion and misdirection. In this second book in the series, Medical Examiner Maura Isles is introduced, and she and Rizzoli begin their long-admired professional collaboration in crime fighting though their relationship doesn’t cross the boundary into level of personal friendship that they do in the television adaptation of the books. Dean and Korsak both have different prominence in the books than they did in the television series as well. Korsak is integral to the case in The Apprentice, although this is the only time he works professionally with Rizzoli and company despite his being a regular on TV. Continue reading →

Doctors make the scariest villains

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By Ande Jacobson

First released in hardback in August 2001, The Surgeon is the first book in Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles series even though Medical Examiner Maura Isles isn’t introduced until the second book. Making full use of her background as a practicing physician before retiring to write mysteries full time, in The Surgeon, Gerritsen creates a riveting mystery that draws the reader in and doesn’t let them go even when they get to the last page because they know there will be more. In another book. Even so, The Surgeon is at turns gripping and terrifying, and the resolution to this first book in the series is satisfying with a whiff of “happily ever after” for some of the characters. Continue reading →

Can old spies ever truly retire?

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By Ande Jacobson

Released in November 2023, The Spy Coast is the first book in Tess Gerritsen’s The Martini Club series about a group of retired spies living in the (fictional) small coastal Maine village of Purity. The trouble is that even though they were trying to leave their former lives behind them, events often have far-reaching consequences they hadn’t considered. The main story begins in the present in the quaint Maine village and careens around the world to Thailand, the UK, Italy, Istanbul, Malta, and points in between bouncing between the past when a mission went horribly wrong triggering events in what was supposed to be a comfortable and incognito retirement. Continue reading →

Hearing in the light of day

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By Ande Jacobson

Teri Kanefield is many things. She’s a lawyer who spent the bulk of her time in practice as an appellate defense attorney. She’s a teacher having taught college level English and creative writing. She’s an award winning author of both fiction and nonfiction. Her educational credentials are impeccable including both her law degree and a master’s in English with an emphasis in fiction writing, something that no doubt came in handy in weaving compelling (but true) narratives in her legal briefs. Now retired from her law practice, she volunteers her time to support our democracy. She uses her writing to reach across boundaries and continue to educate and entertain. Ever the teacher, she provides political and legal analysis for major news organizations and on her own through her blog and social media to help untangle the complex landscape that we now inhabit. Her books continue to be something special. Even in her fiction, she includes salient details that come from her broad base of experience in numerous ways. Turn On the Light So I Can Hear is a novel that reads very personally. It’s not necessarily autobiographical, but the issues and social commentary are familiar to her. Continue reading →