I'm an author that writes romantic suspense, and I can tell you that I am never disappointed by Gerristsen. Her characters are well developed, and she keeps me turning the pages. I read for enjoyment and Tess fills the bill. I love the way she has slowly developed her heroine Rizzoli. Each novel gives you a new insight into her character. If you like thrillers, you'll love this one. I keep trying to put out the light, but end up staying awake until the laast page is turned.

All i can say is wow! This is a superb novel and you wont believe how it ends!! Must read for any Tess Gerritsen fan!! Totally her best I have read so far!

This is a review of the book on CD - unabridged version.

First off, I've been doing a lot of suspense on CD this summer. As some of my other reviews will allude to. But this was certainly one of the better examples.

There are a few themes going on in the book - adoption, birthing, and, of course, murder and mayhem. The two lead characters in the book are lead characters in a series - Dr. Maura Isles and Detective Jane Rizzoli - but there isn't enough missing to make the reader feel as if he MUST read the rest of the series. It works well as a standalone.

I found the plot of this to be sufficiently complex, with parts in the past and parts in the present. The solution is natural, with quite a bit of work and not so much luck behind the uncovering. Yet, there is enough intrigue to keep the story going.

The only thing I found off-putting was the constant whininess of Dr. Isles. She's a forensic pathologist, for goodness sakes. I would NOT expect her to be so squeamish about the things that just hover about her throughout the whole book. I won't say anything more, because it might spoil some of the story, but I just found her character too emotive to the point where she stopped being practical for LONG periods of time. It stretched credulity and it annoyed me.

Overall, though, for this kind of book, pretty darn good read. And excellent resolution.

(*)>

I love a good, quick read that gives me a good, quick, exciting ride. This did it.

BODY DOUBLE is a thriller/mystery that involves several murders, the possibility of more than one bad guy/gal as perpetrator(s), at least one human "monster" behind bars and perhaps one on the loose.

Add to that believable characters that engage your emotions and you get just the right amount of bang for your buck.

The first 25 pages or so dragged just a little bit.

Most popular fiction doesn't hold my interest anymore. All too often, the writing is too bland and unimaginative, the plots are standard fare, and the characters are one-dimensional. Tess Gerritsen is one of the few thriller writers whose work I've enjoyed in recent years. Her writing isn't that special, but she does have real storytelling skill, so that her books have always kept me reading.

The first two books featuring Jane Rizzoli, THE SURGEON and THE APPRENTICE, were truly suspenseful. Rizzoli is close to being a believable character, with the kind of problems that most of us can identify with. In the third novel, THE SINNER, Rizzoli moved to backup status, to make way for the pathologist Dr. Maura Isles. Unfortunately, Isles has yet to become a realistic character. She is more of a placeholder, an inert viewpoint character who exists simply as a device to hang the plot on.

And that's a real problem with BODY DOUBLE. The story has much of the gruesome fascination of THE SURGEON and THE APPRENTICE, and yet it lacks tension. It's fitfully suspenseful, but I got through 150 pages and felt like I was waiting for the story to get started. Over halfway through the book, I still felt that way, and came close to setting it aside for something more interesting.

I finally started skimming, and it finally got interesting again towards the end. However, most of the mystery is unraveled about 50 pages before the story finally concludes, so the rest of the book feels like a long epilogue.

For me, this was just a badly built plot, one that fails to build tension and only delivers sporadically. Far from being the kind of riveting read I was expecting, BODY DOUBLE was a book which thrilled me mostly when I was done with it, and could read something else.

I'll probably try the next book in the series (since I already bought it) but I'm surprised at how highly rated this one is. I hope VANISH sees a return to form.