Vanish review:5 stars (Excellent...) - I have read several of this authors' books and have never been disappointed. This one was no exception. Well written and suspenseful. It kept me guessing all the way through it. We even see a little bit more of the personal side of Jane Rizzoli, something that I think may have been lacking in the last two books. I did think that this was a pretty quick read, but still hughly recommend it.5 stars (Page-turning thriller brings an ugly subject into the light) - Bestselling author Gerritsen delivers another page-turning nail biter, well grounded by the prickly, independent characters of Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles.
In a brief, searing prologue, a terrified Russian girl recounts a story as commonplace as it is horrifying. Poor, without prospects, Mila is persuaded to emigrate to America with the promise of a good job. But once she and the other six girls have embarked it becomes obvious her guides are actually captors. Crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S. they are greeted by four American men who brutally rape them, then shoot one who tries to run away, leaving her body for the vultures.
The narrative then switches to Maura Isles. It's a summer night after a long day and the medical examiner enters her gleaming, deserted morgue to check the position of a corpse's tattoo. As she zips the body bag and turns to leave she hears a noise, dismisses it, then hears it again. Something moving in a body bag. There's a row of them in the busy city morgue and Isles quickly unzips one after another until she comes to a young woman with cold, bluish skin but no obvious wounds or autopsy sutures.
"She pressed her fingers to the woman's neck and felt icy skin. Bending close to the lips, she waited for the whisper of a breath, the faintest puff of air against her cheek.
The corpse opened its eyes."
Meanwhile Jane Rizzoli's baby is overdue and the homicide cop is restless and uncomfortable. Her water breaks while she's subduing an obstreperous defendant in court and she's finally ready. But while Rizzoli waits in a quiet hospital room for an Ultrasound, pandemonium breaks out upstairs.
Isles enters the resurrected woman's hospital room to find a doctor and a security guard attempting to restrain her. As Isles moves forward the patient shoots the security guard, the doctor flees and the woman takes Isles hostage. The police scramble to cover the entrance, Isles manages to escape, and the woman darts deeper into the building - winding up in Diagnostic Imaging, where Rizzoli becomes one of six hostages.
Gerritsen ratchets up the tension, cutting from Rizzoli's cautious dance around the desperate, uncommunicative hostage taker to Isles at the sweltering command post and Rizzoli's husband, FBI agent Gabriel Dean, doing his own tense maneuvering around the powers that be in order to try and save his wife's life from overzealous cops.
Strange turf battles heat up between intruding FBI and locals, the SWAT teams are getting antsy, Rizzoli starts going into labor, the dead security guard turns out to be something much more complicated, and a well-armed man slips through the police perimeter and joins the hostage taker.
Intercut scenes of Mila's narrative describes a hopeless life of brutality and debasement, which builds to a shattering climax, which she escapes with Olena, the hostage taker.
Gerritsen supplies pulse-pounding suspense as she gathers sinister forces around her characters - shadowy people with the highest connections, people with the ability to kill with impunity. Knowing Olena's background, the reader is way ahead of Dean, Rizzoli and Isles as well as the local cops.
Gerritsen, a doctor who took up writing while staying at home with her children, describes the medical side with detailed authority. Her characters grow more appealing and complex with every book - this is the fifth in the series - and the pace is riveting.
She also fleshes out her narrative with real-life issues, from the personal to larger, moral, ripped-from-the-headlines situations. Sex slavery is the big one in this book and many readers will wonder how something so horrifying can go on all but unchallenged in a country like ours.
On a personal level, Rizzoli continues her internal struggle between her need for love and family and her need for independence. Her ambivalence about motherhood - fear, helplessness, frustration and fierce love - is involving and sympathetic and her relationship with Gabriel strikes an authentic chord.
Gerritsen has done it again with a thriller that will keep you up way past your bedtime.5 stars (Wow! What a page turner!) - Warning: don't buy this book unless you want to be up all night. I could not put this book down. The pace is so fast and unrelenting, you'll find yourself staying up all night to finish the book.
