"The Body Double" Reviews

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:

(STARRED REVIEW) 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’s experiencing decidedly unspiritual feelings for her priest. As the novel begins, Isles an adopted child who never knew the identity of her birth parent’s 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. Agent, Meg Ruley. 6-city author tour. (Aug.)

KIRKUS:

(STARRED REVIEW)
Doc Gerritsen rises to her best yet, skirting neatly around the cliché plotting usually tied to serial killers. Once again Boston Homicide Detective Jane Rizzoli plays second fiddle to "Queen of the Dead" Medical Examiner Maura Isles (The Sinner, 2003), who gets to open up all the vics-unless they look just like her. After a week's vacation in Paris, Maura returns to Boston to find flashing police cruisers in front of her house. As she gets out of her car and approaches the police, her neighbors and friendly cops stare at her aghast. They've just seen her dead, shot through the head in a car in front of her next door neighbor's house. Even Maura is astounded to see her own body as a vic. Who is this dead woman? Gerritsen spins out the answer slowly, but we'll tell you that she's Maura's unbeknownst twin sister-both were orphans, adopted at birth by separate families-but also part of a grisly adoption racket that involves the serial murders of pregnant women all around the country. The story turns on Maura's perhaps real mother, a fake schizophrenic locked up in a mental hospital for murder, who tells Maura she's slated to die the same way her sister did. Meanwhile, Maura is pursued by a handsome cop who has heavy family problems. Pregnant Jane Rizzoli, who buddies with Maura to help find answers to her dilemma, is close to term-and one wonders if she too may be slated for death. To tell more would be a disservice. Gerritsen leaves out her great arias on the poetry of the inner organs and the sweet hell of death that so ennobles The Sinner, but she keeps such a tight rein on her inspired plot that we don't miss them. Gerritsen always does well on the charts, but this masterful outing should rocket her into the top bracket of suspense writers.