Rizzoli & Isles

We need to listen

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By Ande Jacobson

Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles series completes for now with Listen to Me, first released in July 2022. This ultimate series installment follows a different path than previous Rizzoli & Isles books. Gerritsen writes this one from multiple points of view focusing on each of the main female characters. As the POV shifts, we get more insight into series regulars Angela Rizzoli, Detective Jane Rizzoli, and Medical Examiner Maura Isles, and into newcomer Amy Antrim. Each has several chapters devoted to them and their thoughts, motivations, inner turmoil, and actions. A major theme of the book, particularly from Angela’s perspective, is “If you see something, say something,” a motto that can either help and hinder depending on the circumstances. As always in Gerritsen’s mysteries, there are numerous subplots that mingle and merge in unexpected ways as the story progresses, generally surrounding a series of murders in some fashion. This time is no exception except perhaps in the complexity of the subplots that each come to the forefront at different points in the story. This one also brings the dangers much closer to home. Continue reading →

Childhood secrets can be dangerous

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By Ande Jacobson

The penultimate book (so far) in Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles series, I Know a Secret, was first released in August 2017. This one is creepy dealing with sociopathic tendencies, childhood frailties, and how a long buried secret can wreak havoc even decades later. For most children, certain situations elicit expected and appropriate displays of emotion. In sad or somber situations like a relative’s funeral, that can sometimes mean tears. For those rare kids who are wired differently such that they don’t feel the normal range of emotions, this might end up being a learned behavior rather than an instinctual one. For such a child, their response can look like those of their peers while instead being a coldly calculated act to avoid standing out. So begins the story narrated by an adult who was once such a child. How that ties into the murders at hand takes most of the book to unfold, but the ending is worth the wait, unsettling though it may be. Continue reading →

A dangerous case of mistaken identity

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By Ande Jacobson

The eleventh book in Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles series, Die Again, was first released in December 2014, and it’s another page turner. Gerritsen has shown herself to be a compelling mystery writer drawing upon her own background knowledge as a doctor and her world travels. This time, the story covers ground in Boston and other places across the U.S. as well as in the wilds of the African Bush region of Botswana. For that last part, Gerritsen draws upon her own experiences on safari adding a lot of color and atmosphere to her descriptions. The initial introduction to a safari some years before the present time of the story at first seems like a diversion fraught with interpersonal drama, but as is often the case in a Gerritsen mystery, it’s far more than that. The safari details are riveting, making the reader feel the tension and the danger surrounding the expedition well before anything untoward occurs. How the safari relates to the crimes at hand, some particularly gory murders in the present day Boston area that become cause for disagreement amongst the detectives in the homicide squad, doesn’t become clear until very late in the story. The Boston murder victims are curious, as is their executioner’s modus operandi which is more predator-oriented than usual. The path the story and the team travel from discovery of each of the bodies to the ultimate solution is a complex one with plenty of plausible misdirection along the way. There’s even a weird turf battle between Rizzoli and Crowe on competing cases that furthers the misdirection. Continue reading →

The kids will be OK

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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 →

When myth and reality merges

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By Ande Jacobson

The Silent Girl, is the ninth book in Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles series, first released in 2011. This book is a treat in that the Kindle version also includes a bonus short story in the Rizzoli & Isles canon entitled Freaks from 2010. Gerritsen considers The Silent Girl a very personal story in which she ties in ancient Chinese folklore that her mother had related to her. Her mother learned these fables and legends during her childhood in China, and they add an ethereal element to the story that infuses the mythos into Jane Rizzoli’s world in unexpected ways. As often happens in Gerritsen’s books, she starts in the past giving readers a foundation they don’t realize connects until much later in the story. This time, although the story starts in San Francisco in the past, it quickly returns to Boston in the present where Maura Isles is testifying in court. Maura’s background matches that of the author to a point – both author and protagonist majored in Anthropology as undergraduates at Stanford and attended medical school at UC San Francisco. From there they diverge in specialty and position, but that’s merely background. The trial in the story sets the scene for why Maura is at odds with most of Boston PD for much of this story. Her factual testimony is key in convicting a police officer accused of killing a young man while in custody. Although the court case has nothing to do with the crimes being investigated in the bulk of the story, it makes the connection between Maura and Jane all the more poignant despite the growing rift caused by Maura’s crossing the thin blue line through her court testimony. Continue reading →

Ski trips can be dangerous

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By Ande Jacobson

Tess Gerritsen’s eighth book in the Rizzoli & Isles series, Ice Cold, was first released in 2010. This time Gerritsen doesn’t dig into her anthropology background. Instead she uses her medical background on the living rather than the dead in this heart-stopping adventure. Reeling from her recent breakup with Father Daniel Brophy, Dr. Maura Isles attends a pathology conference in Wyoming of all places. In November. Before readers catch up with Maura’s adventure, they are first introduced to an insular community in Plain of Angels, Idaho. The compound is home to a small, religious group serving their leader, Prophet Jeremiah Goode. As is often the case in Gerritsen’s mysteries, this opening chapter from the past provides key pieces of information that will become crucial later in the story. In this look back, readers see that the prophet leads what can only be described as a cult. While the activities might jolt the hairs on the back of a reader’s neck, no specific crime is yet revealed. Continue reading →

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 →