The Shape of Night

August 1, 2019
Running away from the memory of a New Year's Eve party gone terribly wrong, food writer Ava Collette escapes Boston for a remote Maine village only to face a haunted house and a murder investigation. Bestselling author of the Rizzoli & Isles series, Gerritsen (I Know a Secret, 2017, etc.) returns with a spellbinding thriller. The focus stays tightly on the experience of the potential victim, Ava, which enables Gerritsen to spin a tight web. Entangled in her own guilt, Ava isolates herself further and further, avoiding calls from her sister and living alone in the ominous Brodie's Watch mansion, named for its builder, a shipping master lost to sea more than a hundred years ago. Although Brodie's Watch initially frightens Ava, the moment she steps over the threshold, she feels inexplicably welcomed. Indeed, she is most welcome, as the shadows in her bedroom coalesce into the shape of a man, a man who may well be the ghost of Capt. Brodie. He stalks the house most nights, seducing Ava into not only the passions of love, but also atonement through punishment meted out for her sins. And so Gerritsen shifts a murder mystery into a Gothic thriller, replete with an unsteady widow's walk, secret alcove, strange smells, ominous sensations, and the ghost. Even the prologue echoes the dream of Manderley from Du Maurier's Rebecca. But then a dead body washes ashore, and the police investigation suggests the dead woman was killed before she hit the water. Fearful that her spectral lover may be a real-life murderer, Ava inquires about Charlotte Nielson, the young woman who rented Brodie's Watch before her and left in an inexplicable hurry. But Ava's investigation uncovers a disturbing list of dead women, which the townspeople seem to have spackled over. Who are they protecting? This riveting Gothic thriller explores the limits of love, guilt, and punishment.

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Starred review from August 5, 2019
This supernatural thriller from bestseller Gerritsen (the Rizzoli and Isles series) ranks with the best of her crime fiction. Boston food writer Ava Colette travels to Tucker Cove, Maine, where she rents Brodie’s Watch, an old house on the coast once owned by a 19th-century sea captain, Jeremiah Brodie. Ava’s goal is to finish writing her latest cookbook there, but she’s also trying to escape a tragic past. Soon her nights are interrupted by visions of Jeremiah’s ghost, who appears to be as real as if he were a flesh and blood man. Meanwhile, she begins to wonder about a series of mysterious if apparently natural deaths in the town—and why the last renter left the house so abruptly. After learning more about the house’s history and its previous inhabitants, she consults a ghost hunter, whose team discovers some disturbing things about paranormal presences at Brodie’s Watch. The stakes rise when Ava figures out that a killer is on the loose who must be stopped. This magnetic haunted house story will keep readers riveted from the very first page. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency.

August 9, 2019

Ava Collette packs up her cooking gear and guilt over a loved one's death and heads to a sleepy town in Maine to hide out and write a cookbook about historical New England cuisine. Renting the retreat Brodie's Watch is her first step in digging into the area's history, but she soon discovers that the house is not as peaceful as it first appears. She'd heard it was haunted by Captain Brodie, who met an unfortunate fate almost 150 years earlier, and when she wakes to find a ghost in her room she doesn't know what to think. Soon Ava's shakiness is apparent to everyone around her, including a doctor who wants more than a doctor-patient relationship, a ghost-hunting troupe, and locals who are suspicious of outsiders. When multiple apparently accidental deaths happen nearby, Ava seeks the truth as she is drawn further into life at Brodie's Watch and its enticing and dangerous world. VERDICT Fans of multiple genres will follow Gerritsen's meandering story through the realms of mystery, paranormal romance, erotica, and psychological suspense to its compelling conclusion. [Prepub Alert, 4/28/19.]--Jenna Harmison, Champaign Cty. Lib., OH

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 9, 2019

Fleeing Boston after a tragedy for which she feels responsible, Ava Collette rents an old house on a Maine peninsula, dismissing rumors that the house is haunted by a sea captain--until she meets his apparition face to face. Soon she's investigating the unexplained disappearance of the previous renter and a string of accidental deaths in the area, discovering secrets the nearby town wants buried. From the author of page-and-screen champ "Rizzoli & Isles."

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.