The Silent Girl

May 30, 2011
In Gerritsen's gripping ninth Rizzoli & Isles novel (after Ice Cold), a severed hand found on a Chinatown street leads Det. Jane Rizzoli, Boston PD, to a rooftop, where she discovers a female body with a slit throat and without a hand. About the only clues to the Jane Doe's identity are silvery hairs on the victim's clothes that may not be human. Rizzoli and her team uncover a link to a 19-year-old murder/suicide case, in which an illegal immigrant cook, Wu Weimin, allegedly shot a waiter, three customers, and himself inside the Red Phoenix restaurant late one night. Some people in Chinatown still believe Wu was innocent. Meanwhile, in a strange coincidence, two missing girls turn out to be related to victims of the Red Phoenix massacre. Medical examiner Maura Isles plays a supporting role, though both women deal with personal and family issues that reveal their humanity and lend credibility to this deft thriller. Author tour.

August 29, 2011
In this ninth entry in the Rizzoli and Isles series, fiery Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli probes the mystery of a gruesome murder in Chinatown while cool forensic pathologist Maura Isles copes with the consequences of testifying against a violent cop. Tanya Eby—who narrated the previous volume in the series—deftly captures the socioeconomic and emotional differences that distinguish this odd couple. Her Rizzoli is properly blue collar, with a hard Boston accent, while Isles’s speech is thoughtful and just aloof enough to suggest an upper-middle-class upbringing. Additionally, Eby provides appropriate voices to gruff lawmen, Irish mobsters, and even several citizens of Chinatown without stumbling into ethnic parody. Perhaps more importantly, she knows how to wring every last drop of suspense out of a tense situation, which this crisp thriller provides in abundance. Eby’s excellent interpretation of Gerritsen’s well-crafted tale makes for a thoroughly entertaining package. A Ballantine Books hardcover.

June 15, 2011

Paired for the 10th time, Rizzoli (homicide cop) and Isles (forensic pathologist) learn that in Boston's Chinatown, revenge is a dish served sweet & sour.

They find the hand first, neatly severed, on a quiet street in the heart of Chinatown. On a nearby rooftop, they find the rest of her: Jane Doe, young, auburn-haired, dressed in ninja black, completely gorgeous and, of course, extremely dead. It takes a while for Detective Jane Rizzoli and her Boston PD colleagues to identify her. As it happens, however, who she was and what she was up to turns out to be less important than where she ended—at the site of a small, innocuous Chinese restaurant called the Red Phoenix. Innocuous, except for the fact that 19 years earlier mass murder exploded on its premises. The cook, Wu Weimin, an illegal from China, suddenly berserk, pulled a gun, shot James Fang, a waiter, three customers and finally himself. Or so the story went. Now fault lines are becoming apparent. When Rizzoli finds herself eye to eye with Iris Fang, widow of the slain James, the holes deepen. Iris, Jane realizes at once, is extraordinary—and ferocious. In her 50s, the owner of a martial-arts academy, she carries herself like a queen, with something dark and resolute in her gaze that in the right circumstances could be terrifying. And she makes it clear that she has good and sufficient reasons for not believing Wu Weimin could ever have murdered her husband. Meanwhile, Dr. Maura Isles, preparing to conduct the post mortem on Jane Doe, has good and sufficient reasons for being distracted. Do these explain a developing rift in the long-standing, mutually appreciative team of Rizzoli and Isles (Ice Cold, 2010, etc.). In any event, is the rift irreparable?

The ending is way over the top, the prose occasionally purple-tinged, but Gerritsen is a hardscrabble plotter, and much of what she does is compelling.

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February 1, 2011

Up on a Chinatown rooftop, Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles encounter a grisly scene--no doubt described in the blood-curdling graphic style that has successfully carried these two characters through numerous New York Times best sellers to their ninth outing here. Rizzoli also notices a strange hair--which turns out to come from a monkey. And that leads us into the story of the Monkey King, a powerful and sometimes belligerent character in Chinese literature. Tie-in promotion to the recently launched TNT series Rizzoli & Isles and an eight-city tour; get multiples.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2011
Homicide investigator Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles, the protagonists of a string of best-selling thrillers and a television series, have a tough case on their hands. It begins with a womans severed hand, which is soon accompanied by the rest of the corpse, which itself may be connected to a two-decades-old mystery involving a perpetrator for whom the word inhuman may be a more appropriate description than Rizzoli and Isles care to contemplate. The novels supernatural undertones might put off some faithful series readers, but theres no denying that the touch of otherworldliness livens up the proceedings, giving the series a much-needed energy boost. Rizzoli and Isles are likable and industrious, as always, and Gerritsen seems more engaged this time out, her prose livelier, and her dialogue more memorable. Recent series entries have been solid, workmanlike thrillers, but this one has some real spark to it. Fans should definitely check it out, and readers who have wandered away from the series might want to give it another try.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)