The Surgeon

Christine Louise Marshall reads this hold-your-breath medical thriller that is not for the light of heart. Dr. Catherine Cordell works a hard and joyless life as an emergency room trauma physician in order to blot out the horror of the serial rapist-murderer she killed in self-defense two years earlier in Georgia. Now a new evil has appeared in Boston, performing atrocities that could only be known by Cordell's dead assailant. In the sections told from the killer's perspective, Christine Marshall is not as effective or believable as she is in the third-person narrative. Throughout the rest of the book, however, Marshall's piercing and powerful reading gives the listener an unforgettable roller-coaster ride. S.E.S. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

July 2, 2001
A creepy cerebral serial killer vaguely reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter pursues a charismatic female doctor in this thoroughly satisfying if somewhat derivative thriller. Skillfully drawn surgical backdrops sizzling with ER
intensity balance out the obligatory romantic intrigue and familiar plucky police professionals, attesting to Gerritsen's authentic medical expertise as a former physician. Dr. Catherine Cordell, the main character in this chilling tale, thought she had shot and killed her rapist and would-be murderer two years earlier in steamy Savannah, where he was a surgery intern at her hospital. Now, in Boston, as another hot summer begins, he appears to have miraculously returned and embarked once again on his grisly mission: he rapes women, then surgically removes their wombs. As two intrepid detectives—Thomas Moore and Jane Rizzoli—investigate, Cordell begins to doubt her own memories (or lack of) and discovers that not even her OR is safe. Gliding as smoothly as a scalpel in a confident surgeon's hand, this tale proves that Gerritsen (Harvest; Life Support; Bloodstream; Gravity), originally a romance writer, has morphed into a dependable suspense novelist whose growing popularity is keeping pace with her ever-finer writing skills. (Sept.)Forecast:National print advertising in
People, the
New York Times and
USA Today, plus a major promotion campaign, will ratchet Gerritsen's sales up yet another notch.