The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen

My plan to read some more Gerritsen some time in the indefinite future got a bump when my daughter went to Hastings and found a shelf of her books (she had read The Apprentice after I finished it).

So - this one is the first in this particular series, preceding The Apprentice. It is the story of the creepy bad guy's earlier foray into mutilating women, in which Jane Rizzoli receives the injuries which haunt her through the second book.

Again, tight, well-plotted police drama loaded with tension - kept me up reading last night. I will be reading the rest of these - my daughter bought all of this series. This is an interesting point regarding Gerritsen's work. Rather than continue indefinitely with the same detective(s) as is "traditional" in formula mystery, Gerritsen has several series with different settings and characters - some classified as "romantic suspense" - a category that causes many mystery afficianados to cringe. I will withhold judgement until I have actually read one. I have experienced both good and bad in that genre. And some I consider bad are very popular with people that I know and admire. As for me, I was a great fan of what I call "gothic horrors" when I was younger (don't open the door, you twit!) and then there were Mary Stewart and Barbara Michaels - mistresses of romantic and gothic suspense. But I digress.

Curiously, Jane Rizzoli is not the central character in this book. She is close to the center - and it is she, of course, who actually gets hold of the crucial clue and runs the baddy to earth before he can finish off Catherine Cordell. She has to be rescued herself, but anyway. She is more nearly the center of book two, and my daughter says (based on the back cover) that Maura Isles is central in book three. Isles, by the way, does not appear in book one at all. Seems to me it took considerable creativity on someone's part to create a television series based on those two characters. Also, given Gerritsen's description of Rizzoli as short and unequivocally plain (but with nice eyes) - casting Angie Harmon in the part --- well, never mind.