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Body Double

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Overview

Boston medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles literally meets her match-and must face a savage serial killer and shattering personal revelations-in the brilliant new novel of suspense by the New York Times bestselling author of The Surgeon and The Sinner.

Editorial Reviews

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-is experiencing decidedly unspiritual feelings for her priest. As the novel begins, Isles-an adopted child who never knew the identity of her birth parents-is 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.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Tess Gerritsen

Tess Gerritsen is the author of several successful medical thrillers. Gerritsen began writing as a means of relaxation from the stressful life of a physician and ultimately abandoned her career as an internist. Her books, such as Life Support and Bloodstream, deal with highly ethical dilemmas in a complex and hypnotizing manner. Bloodstream, which is primarily about the selling of human organs on the black market, also explores the subjects of youth violence and parents who become afraid of children. Gerritsen was born on June 12, 1953 in San Diego and attended Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco. In addition to her medical stories, she is the author of several romantic suspense novels published as part of the "Harlequin Intrigue" series.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Ballantine Books

Filesize

610.93 KB

Number of Pages

416

eBook ISBN

9780345478658

Excerpt from: Body Double by Tess Gerritsen

ONE
Pesez le matin que vous n'irez peut-etre pas jusqu'au soir,
Et au soir que vous n'irez peut-etre pas jusqu'au matin.
Be aware every morning that you may not last the day,
And every evening that you may not last the night.

--ENGRAVED PLAQUE IN THE CATACOMBS OF PARIS

A ROW OF SKULLS glared from atop a wall of intricately stacked femurs and tibias. Though it was June, and she knew the sun was shining on the streets of Paris sixty feet above her, Dr. Maura Isles felt chilled as she walked down the dim passageway, its walls lined almost to the ceiling with human remains. She was familiar, even intimate, with death, and had confronted its face countless times on her autopsy table, but she was stunned by the scale of this display, by the sheer number of bones stored in this network of tunnels beneath the City of Light. The one-kilometer tour took her through only a small section of the catacombs. Off-limits to tourists were numerous side tunnels and bone-filled chambers, their dark mouths gaping seductively behind locked gates. Here were the remains of six million Parisians who had once felt the sun on their faces, who had hungered and thirsted and loved, who had felt the beating of their own hearts in their chests, the rush of air in and out of their lungs. They could never have imagined that one day their bones would be unearthed from their cemetery resting places, and moved to this grim ossuary beneath the city.

That one day they would be on display, to be gawked at by hordes of tourists.