Body Double (A Rizzoli & Isles Thriller) [Paperback]

Tess Gerritsen (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: BALLANTINE BOOKS (2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553824503
• ISBN-13: 978-0553824506
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 1.3 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (120 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,990,355 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a physician as well as the New York Times-bestselling author of medical thrillers and the Jane Rizzoli crime thrillers.

Readers who are familiar with my graphic autopsy scenes and forensic details may be astonished to learn that my very first published novels were actually ... romantic suspense. So why did I leave writing romances and turn to thrillers?

It was all because of a chance dinner conversation some years ago. The man sitting beside me at a restaurant one night was an ex-cop who 'd recently been traveling in Russia. Moscow cops had told him that orphans were vanishing from the streets, and they believed the children were being kidnaped and shipped abroad as organ donors.

I was horrified by the tale. Weeks later, unable to forget those missing Russian orphans, I knew I just had to write a book about them. I wanted to bring into it all the medical and autopsy details that I'd learned from my years as a physician. The sights, the smells of the autopsy and operating rooms -- everything.

My first medical thriller, HARVEST, was released in hardcover in 1996, and it marked my debut on the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller list. It was followed by my medical thrillers LIFE SUPPORT (1997), BLOODSTREAM (1998), GRAVITY (1999).

In 2001, my books took another abrupt turn, to forensic thrillers. THE SURGEON was my first Jane Rizzoli thriller. Since then, I've written THE APPRENTICE (2002), THE SINNER (2003), BODY DOUBLE (2004), VANISH (2005 -- and an Edgar Award nominee), and THE MEPHISTO CLUB (2006).

I believe my readers want me to tell them secrets. And that's exactly what I try to do. I take them into the autopsy room, and show them what I've seen. But most of all, I hope I'm revealing what lies in the hearts of my characters. Jane Rizzoli and Dr. Maura Isles are real people to me now. I hope they're just as real to everyone who becomes acquainted with them!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Downright Scary!!, September 25, 2005

By 

Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Body Double (Hardcover)

Boston medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles returns from a Forensic Pathology conference in Paris to find four Brookline police cruisers, lights flashing, outside her home. When her neighbors, the cops, and finally friend and colleague, homicide detective Jane Rizzoli look at Maura in disbelief, she knows something is really wrong and that it must involve her. A dead woman has been found, sitting in the driver's seat of a car parked in front of her home. The Jane Doe, shot through the head, is Maura's body double. The two could be twins. And, in fact, the corpse shares her blood type and birth date. Further tests will show their DNA is a match. Maura was adopted in infancy and knows nothing about her birth mother or blood ties. The discovery that the same lawyer who handled Maura's adoption also handled the placement of the dead woman, another adoptee, is the final straw which sends Maura on a quest to discover her roots.

Boston Police Detective Jane Rizzoli, in her eighth month of pregnancy, realizes that her search for the killer converges with Maura's own personal investigation. Her findings, which are inextricably linked to Isles' past and present, are gruesome and point to many more than one untimely, violent death. As Maura delves deeply into her history, it becomes clear she may be the killer's next target.

"Body Double" is the first book I have read by Tess Gerritsen, but it won't be my last. Although this compelling suspense thriller is apparently part of an ongoing series featuring Dr. Isles, Detective Rizzoli, etc., it is definitely a stand alone novel. As I found myself riveted to this dark tale, I was glad to know that if I wanted to read more about the fascinating characters, I could do so in the author's previous books. Gerritsen's narrative is extremely well written, and at times, downright scary. Highly recommended!
JANA

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Move over Patricia Cornwell!, August 30, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Body Double (Hardcover)

In the prologue to Gerritsen's latest Maura Isles/Jane Rizzoli thriller, a bullied, unhappy schoolgirl is lured into the woods by a handsome classmate and then cast into a pit to die. Gerritsen then switches to Isles, a Boston medical examiner, returning from a Paris conference (where she takes us on an eerie tour of the catacombs) to find Homicide Detective Rizzoli among the cops on her front lawn, blue lights flashing, shocked to see her. They've just been examining her murdered corpse.

Having got your attention some writers might have trouble maintaining this front-loaded pace, but Gerritsen deepens the mystery then ratchets up the suspense and horror right to the final nail-biting page.

Isles' character emerges through her actions. She is wary of introspection and her shock at her double's murder shows in her altered view of daily details and her dogged pursuit of the mystery wherever it leads, be it an isolated Maine cabin with human bones in the ground outside, or a maximum security prison.

Isles, adopted, has found her twin too late. As she begins to peel away the layers of family identity, similarities strike her - a failed marriage, a career in science. But these poignant revelations are soon disrupted by far more sinister implications. Rizzoli, eight months pregnant and working on the murder, has found Isles' mother, maybe. And she's not a mother to love.

Meanwhile there's a serial killer at work, one the reader is aware of before the cops. His latest victim is the very pregnant wife of a slimy BMW car dealer. Snatched from her home, she wakes up in a coffin-like box where we revisit her from time to time until she goes into labor - the moment the killer has been waiting for.

Point of view shifts between Isles and Rizzoli, with briefer digressions to the terrified woman in the box. Rizzoli is a cop who can hold her own - with a frightened angry friend or a belligerent suspect. Isles, competent and strong, has an appealing vulnerability that is expertly handled in this intense, personal story.

Gerritsen has had a busy career. A former internist and romance writer (Isles juggles a forbidden passion and a budding romance with the cop who loved her sister), her medical examiner is emerging as a formidable rival to Patricia Cornwell's.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ME comes home to find her spitting image shot in front of her house..., August 9, 2005

By 

R. Kyle (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Body Double (Hardcover)

Dr. Maura Isles left her practice as a pathologist at Stanford University because her marriage and life was too complicated. Her husband Victor kept far too many secrets from her...

She's been in Boston for two years---and suddenly she's finding Victor isn't the only one with secrets in their past. When Maura returns from Paris to discover a woman who could be her shot dead in a car parked in front of her home, the first mystery begins.

Then, 9 months pregnant Mattie Purvis is taken from her home. She awakens in what feels like a box. She has food, water, a flashlight---all it takes to survive, but she's not sure what the kidnapper really wants--is it a ransom or something else?

"Body Double" is an extremely well-written medical thriller from internist-turned-author Tess Gerritson. Every chapter has hooks designed to imbed deep and leave you guessing, wanting to read on. Maura Isles, the main voice of the novel and pregnant cop, Jane Rizzoli, as well as Mattie Purvis in her captivity keep the fast-paced action human and personal. These three heroic women take a mundane novel and turn it into something hard to put down.

Definitely going to check out the rest of the Maura Isles novels by Gerritson.