Body Double

.co.uk

If there’s one thing that Tess Gerritsen’s Body Double categorically proves, it’s that there are few writers (on either side of the Atlantic) as consistent as her in turning out pungent and atmospheric thrillers, each as finely honed as the last. The Surgeon, with its ritualistic serial killer apparently returning from the dead to menace the surgeon he blamed for his death, marked out Gerritsen’s unsettling territory with immense assurance: here was a writer for whom there were few taboos when it came to disturbing the reader. Similarly, The Apprentice gleaned considerable acclaim for its chilling portrait of a killer utilising his medical knowledge in unspeakable fashion. Body Double has all the characteristic Gerritsen imagination and innovation (despite a title that has seen service a little too often); here, Detective Jane Rizzoli has the feeling that she is gazing at her doppelganger when she looks at the body of Boston pathologist Dr Maura Isles stretched out on the slab that was her own work surface. Maura Isles has Jane’s physical appearance, birth date, and even blood type. And when tests reveal that the women are twin sisters, Jane is plunged into a dangerous mystery, travelling to Maine where she must investigate the identity of a mother she never knew. And, all the while, a savage murderer is indulging in nationwide slaughter. Gerritsen has created some controversy with her readiness to gaze into the darker recesses of human psychopathology, and this book (like its predecessors) is not for the squeamish. But those seeking powerful and trenchant crime writing need not hesitate. Jane Rizzoli, too, is a strongly characterised protagonist. --Barry Forshaw --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié.

From Publishers Weekly

Pregnant women play key roles in this bone-chilling fourth novel in Gerritsen's edgy, suspenseful series of thrillers featuring Boston Medical Examiner Maura Isles and Homicide Detective Jane Rizzoli. Both of the usually gritty crime fighters are uncharacteristically vulnerable. Rizzoli is carrying her first child, and Isles—divorced and alone at age 40 and suddenly, unsettlingly aware of her biological clock—is experiencing decidedly unspiritual feelings for her priest. As the novel begins, Isles—an adopted child who never knew the identity of her birth parents—is confronted by the corpse of a murdered woman who is apparently her identical twin. Another detective, Rick Ballard, comes forward to say that he knew the victim and is certain her killer is a powerful pharmaceutical baron known to have stalked her. Isles falls for the handsome Ballard, but she isn't convinced by his theory, and she launches an investigation into her sister's past, following the trail to a state correctional facility and a schizophrenic inmate who may be her mother. This opens the cobwebbed pages of a nightmarish family album and leads Isles to a remote cabin in Maine where the long-dead body of a pregnant woman is discovered buried in the woods. The killer, Isles discovers, has been murdering pregnant women for decades, making periodic sweeps of the country. Meanwhile, brief scenes chronicle the diabolical kidnapping of an affluent pregnant housewife who is kept buried in a crude coffin. An electric series of startling twists, the revelation of ghoulishly practical motives and a nail-biting finale make this Gerritsen's best to date.
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