Review: The Sinner – Tess Gerritsen

Rizzoli & Isles #3

SYNOPSIS: Within the walls of a cloistered convent, a scene of unspeakable carnage is discovered. On the snow lie two nuns, one dead, one critically injured – victims of a seemingly motiveless, brutally savage attack.

Medical examiner Maura Isles’ autopsy of the murder victim yields a shocking surprise, but the case takes a disturbing twist. The body of another woman has been found. And someone has gone to a lot trouble to remove her face, hands and feet.

As long buried secrets are revealed so Dr Isles and homicide detective Jane Rizzoli, find themselves part of an investigation that leads to an awful, dawning realisation of the killer’s identity… – via Goodreads

I have thoroughly been enjoying re-reading these books, though something I must admit is that they won’t necessarily linger too long after the fact. Some, obviously, have better and more memorable stories than others, and while I enjoyed this one, I could barely remember anything about it (which can also be nice in terms of a re-read). The book flows pretty nicely, and this one focused on finally giving us more on Dr Maura Isles, though it did not leave Jane Rizzoli forgotten. If anything, this book is the one that makes them bot more human and identifiable. Rizzoli is struggling with her difficult romance with Gabriel Dean, as well as the knowledge that she is pregnant and has no idea what she is going to do about it. Maura is completely caught up in her whirlwind realisation that she is lonely and cut off from the living and spends far too much time with the dead, and while she is dealing with all this, her ex-husband Victor turns up in town. Maura has always been presented as cold and cut off, so it is nice to get a little of the inside track on her to get a better understanding of how and why she does things. A friendship has also started to develop between Maura and Rizzoli, which is also quite nice and it hasn’t been forced, also something that counts in its favour. Something to note, though, the concept of religion and death is seriously hammered on in this book, which at times grates a little bit and might really annoy some, but most of the time you get past it pretty quickly. The plot itself is alright and is paced fine, but sometimes there are things that niggle at you about it, but no deal-breaker at any rate – it just jumped around a bit, but it was never actually bland. The Sinner is also most certainly different from the last two books in both tone and pace, but I found that it worked. I liked getting a better look at Jane’s family, as we have heard nothing but how horrible it is for Jane to visit with them and spend time, but Angela certainly let Jane in on a few secrets that really makes you view the woman differently. Overall, well worth the read, though this is a book certainly more for the characters than the plot and is not one that is going to stay with you for very long after.