Today’s book was a mystery novel or crime novel that I recently found at my local library. It is based in Boston and is about a female detective working in the homicide department. The book I am referring to is The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen and is the first book in her popular Rizzoli and Isles series. It focuses on the actions of police detectives Moore and Rizzoli as they work to track down a serial killer known only as the Surgeon. A killer who removes organs from various women before slitting their throat. The two detectives quickly discover that it may have something to do with a different serial killer from Georgia who was killed by his last attempted victim, the same victim that then relocated to Boston. Working with this victim, Dr. Catherine Cordell, they start to slowly unravel the mystery that is the Surgeon and attempt to piece together how the two different strings of crimes may be related.
I picked this book to read primarily because it was the first book in the Rizzoli and Isles series and I have been meaning to try that series for a while now as I have long heard good things about it. That being said, I was a little disappointed that we only meet Rizzoli in this book as Dr. Isles did not appear. It was still an incredible book though and the level of detail present throughout was great. I don’t know a lot about the medical field but the author obviously does as they provided numerous specific details that would probably only be known by people who worked in that field or knew someone who did. It provided a great level of realism to the book as it really felt like it was an authentic story, in that it felt like it could be the type of story that actually happened. Mind you, I do not wish for something like the book describes to actually happen. Another thing the book was really good at was describing the small nitty-gritty details of how a police investigation works. Not all books that are police procedurals like this one are very realistic but I really felt like this one was. I say that because of the interesting characteristics of this story. One of the main characters is a female detective so the book includes the small things about how she is treated by her peers in a male-dominated field. I don’t know about you but I actually felt kind of sorry for Rizzoli for having to put up with some of what she did in the book. It paints an interesting picture and light on male-dominated fields and the harassment women have to put up with by choosing to work in those fields. That is not something that all authors would have thought to include but by including it the realism of the story is heightened even more than it already was. The last thing I want to discuss about this book is the gradual build-up of tension. Just about any good mystery book has to have a good build-up of tension as they work to solve whatever mystery they are faced with. There has to be just the right balance of feeling like they are making progress and feeling like they are being overwhelmed by what is happening. That level of tension has to be carefully maintained and built over the course of the book. If the mystery ends up being too easy then the tension doesn’t feel right but if the mystery ends up being too difficult then the tension can also not feel right. This book did an incredible job of building it up at just the right pace for us to feel the same tension the detectives feel throughout the book. I give this book four out of five stars.
This book was a great book and a great first book in the series. I am definitely curious about how the character of Detective Rizzoli will be built up in the later books, especially after they actually introduce Dr. Isles. This book was a good example of a murder mystery and one that I would definitely recommend to people who are fans of that particular genre. However, if you are not fans of that genre than I would recommend that you be careful if you decide to read this as there are some rather graphic descriptions of the dead bodies at different points of the book. For the same reason, I would not recommend this book be read by younger readers. No younger than late teens I would suggest and probably older than that depending on the reader. I did enjoy the book though and if anyone has suggestions for similar books than please feel free to share them in the comments.
A little something funny that I felt the need to share. I sometimes work as a reviewer with LibraryThing and they frequently do interviews with different authors. About the time I was reading this book which was the very first time I had ever read a book by Tess Gerritsen they did an interview with her about her most recent book. Here’s the link for the interview if anyone is interested in reading it. https://blog.librarything.com/2025/03/author-interview-tess-gerritsen/