By Ande Jacobson

Last to Die, is the tenth book in Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles series and was first released in 2012. Like the previous book, the Kindle version of this one includes a bonus short story in the Rizzoli & Isles canon entitled John Doe also from 2012. For the main story, Gerritsen weaves a complicated web of unlikely connections that build to a surprising conclusion. The focus is on three unfortunate children, Teddy Clock, Claire Ward, and Will Yablonski. The first part of the book gives some background on all three, and they have a strange connection in that they not only lost their families in tragic accidents, they lost the families that took them in afterwards in equally horrific fashion. The three seemingly had no connection to one another other than being their family’s last survivors. Through a series of unlikely events, they all end up at the Evensong School in an effort to keep them safe while the authorities investigate what happened to their families. Before meeting at the school, the three didn’t think they had ever met and didn’t think they had anything in common, at least at first. Julian Perkins also plays a major role in this story, and he and Dr. Maura Isles help one another with the investigation. Anthony Sansone also joins the fray in an important but peripheral capacity. Of course the police regulars including Jane Rizzoli, Barry Frost, Darren Crowe, Lieutenant Marquette, and others are prominent in the story as well. Continue reading →