With Body Double by Tess Gerritsen we return to Boston and Rizzoli and Isles. Dr. Isles is returning from a conference in Paris when she is puzzled to find police swarming her house and Detective Rizzoli a little shell shocked at the sight of her. While the explanation of a body found in a car in her driveway does explain the police presence, it is not until she actually sees the body that she understands Rizzoli’s reaction. The body in question could have literally been her twin sister. Beyond confused by the body, she lets them continue their investigation into the young woman. This just seems to throw up even more confusion when they discover that the young woman in question is her twin sister and that she seems to have been hiding out under a false name. That just leads them to another detective who claims her sister was hiding from an abusive ex. Dr. Isles finally ends up tracing her sister’s footsteps in order to gain insight into her only to discover that there may have been even more secrets in their family past. Now there are links to their potential parents as well as a long string of bodies that may or may not be related.
If you really want a great way to start a book that is just going to draw readers right in, this seems to be one of the better ones. I’m not just saying that either, having a character show up from an out of town trip only to find your friend who is a cop investigating what they thought was your murder really just grabs your attention and makes you wonder what on earth is going on. What was interesting though is that the further down the family rabbit hole they spiral the more they go off track and end up digging up a bunch of dead bodies, both literal and figurative in this case. I found myself heavily intrigued just watching how things played out for Dr. Isles as she delved into such a tricky, messy and complicated topic. In terms of plot though this was great as it seemed to just unravel into this giant mess of strings that don’t seem to be related but end up being all interconnected in rather surprising ways. I had fun trying to puzzle out how everything ended up being related and I was only barely ahead of Rizzoli and Isles at times. It was thoroughly engrossing and highly engaging and I greatly enjoyed this addition to the series. I am giving this book four out of five stars.
As you probably gathered this book is a thriller with a heavy dose of mystery mixed in there so it would appeal the most to those who already enjoy those genres. It is aimed primarily at an adult audience which I would definitely agree with as it gets fairly graphic at times though not overly gory. The story is also fairly dark and deals with some heavy topics so even adult readers might want to be careful going in for this one. I would not recommend this book for anyone younger than about sixteen. A good book though and if none of that is an issue I would recommend that you consider trying it. The book is part of a series and while you can read it without having read the previous ones I would recommend that you still do anyway just for the extra background knowledge. I hope you try it and if you do consider sharing your thoughts in the comments.