Published: July 7th, 2022
Publisher: Bantam Press
Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Crime Fiction, Psychological Thriller, Hardboiled, Crime Series
Format: Kindle, Kindle, Audiobook
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for the latest in the Rizzoli and Isles series. Thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for the invitation to take part and Bantam Press for the eBook ARC.
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SYNOPSIS:
Rizzoli & Isles return, in the nail-biting new thriller from Sunday Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen.
The murder of Sofia Suarez is both gruesome and seemingly senseless. Why would anyone target a respected nurse who was well-liked by her friends and her neighbours? As Detective Jane Rizzoli and Forensic Pathologist Maura Isles investigate the baffling case, they discover that Sofia was guarding a dangerous secret — a secret that may have led the killer straight to her door.
Meanwhile, Jane’s watchful mother Angela Rizzoli is conducting an investigation of her own. She may be a grandmother, not a police detective, but she’s savvy enough to know there’s something very strange, perhaps even dangerous, about the new neighbours across the street. The problem is, no one believes her, not even her own daughter.
Immersed in the hunt for Sofia’s killer, Jane and Maura are too busy to pay attention to Angela’s fears. With no one listening to her, and danger mounting in her neighbourhood, Angela just may be forced to take action on her own…
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MY REVIEW:
“Maura could dissect a body, examine its tissues all the way down to the cellular level, but what the dead knew and saw and felt as the lights blinked out would remain a mystery.”
Rizzoli and Isles has been one of my favourite crime series’, and Tess Gerritsen one of my favourite authors, since I borrowed The Surgeon from the library almost twenty years ago. So when I heard that Rizzoli and Isles were back after a five year break I was thrilled. I couldn’t wait to not only be back with the familiar characters, but also immerse myself in Gerritsen’s darkly atmospheric words. It did not disappoint, reminding me of why she is known as the Queen of Crime.
In the thirteenth instalment in the series Detective Jane Rizzoli and Forensic Pathologist Maura Isles are investigating the gruesome murder of Sofia Suarez. There are no immediate motives for the crime, but when Rizzoli discovers that Suarez was guarding a dangerous secret, everything changes.
Meanwhile Rizzoli’s mother Angela is busy keeping a watchful eye on her neighbours when she notices something strange about the new couple across the street. Her daughter and the police department dismiss her as a busybody, but Angela is sure there is something sinister going on and begins her own ameteur investigation, little realising the danger she is walking into…
“That was the burden of working in homicide; you are always too late to change the victim’s fate.”
Gerritsen has knocked it out of the park yet again. Sharply written, cleverly crafted and perfectly paced, this is suspense at its best. You can feel yourself in the hands of a masterful storyteller as Gerritsen expertly takes the everyday and merges it with the macabre. I was on tenterhooks as she intricately wove the threads together until the full, shocking picture emerged.
Despite an absence of a number of years I found it easy to step back into Rizzoli and Isles’ world, the characters feeling like old friends. I’ve always loved how she fills this series with such strong, nuanced and familiar female characters that are richly drawn and easy to like. I particularly enjoyed Angela Rizzoli’s character in this story and liked how Gerritsen used her to highlight how older women are often invisible and easily dismissed. I felt for Angela as her concerns were pushed aside yet she felt so sure there was something wrong. It was great to see her shine after spending so long as more of a background character.
If you’re a fan of dark, tense, twisty and gripping thrillers then this should be on your TBR. While having read the other books in the series is recommended because they are so good, it isn’t necessary and you could also enjoy it as a standalone.
Rating: ✮✮✮✮✰
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MEET THE AUTHOR:
Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D.
While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction. In 1987, her first novel was published. Call After Midnight, a romantic thriller, was followed by eight more romantic suspense novels. She also wrote a screenplay, “Adrift”, which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson.
Tess’s first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in hardcover in 1996, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her suspense novels since then have been: Life Support (1997), Bloodstream (1998), Gravity (1999), The Surgeon (2001), The Apprentice (2002), The Sinner (2003), Body Double (2004), Vanish (2005), The Mephisto Club (2006), The Bone Garden (2007), The Keepsake (2008; UK title: Keeping the Dead), Ice Cold (2010; UK title: The Killing Place), The Silent Girl (2011), Last To Die (2012), Die Again (2014), Playing With Fire (2015), and I Know A Secret (2017). Her books have been published in forty countries, and more than 30 million copies have been sold around the world.
Her books have been top-3 bestsellers in the United States and number one bestsellers abroad. She has won both the Nero Wolfe Award (for Vanish) and the Rita Award (for The Surgeon). Critics around the world have praised her novels as “Pulse-pounding fun” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “Scary and brilliant” (Toronto Globe and Mail), and “Polished, riveting prose” (Chicago Tribune). Publisher Weekly has dubbed her the “medical suspense queen”.
Her series of novels featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the TNT television series “Rizzoli & Isles” starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander.
Now retired from medicine, she writes full time. She lives in Maine.
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BUY THE BOOK:
Waterstones | Amazon | Bookshop.org
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Thanks for reading Bibliophiles 😊Emma xxxx
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