Last to Die

July 16, 2012
At the start of Gerritsen’s pulse-pounding 10th thriller featuring Det. Jane Rizzoli of the Boston PD and her close friend, pathologist Maura Isles (after 2011’s The Silent Girl), an unidentified narrator describes her hunt for a person nicknamed Icarus, a fiend who has sought refuge in a villa outside Rome, Italy. The scene shifts to Ithaca, N.Y., where 13-year-old Claire Ward survives a car crash that kills her foster parents, then to rural New Hampshire, where 14-year-old Will Yablonski’s aunt and uncle perish in an explosion that destroys their farmhouse. When a similar slaughter that leaves one foster child alive occurs on Boston’s Beacon Hill, Rizzoli and Isles get the case. The high-pressure assignment doesn’t delay Isles’s Maine vacation plans, but her time away from Boston turns out to be a highly unpleasant and risky busman’s holiday. Gerritsen pulls things together nicely by the end as she crafts several sequences that will leave readers anxious about the outcome. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency.

September 1, 2012
Three children survive wholesale homicide, and Rizzoli and Isles (Silent Girl, 2011, etc.) have to find out how. The Wards, the Yablonskis and the Clocks--what did they have in common, aside from being virtually wiped out in the same year? Not much, insists Detective Darren Crowe. Moreover, he's quick to point out, only one of those decimated families merits attention from the Boston PD since the last time he looked, neither New York nor New Hampshire was in its jurisdiction. A fair point, Detective Jane Rizzoli has to acknowledge, much as she dislikes her cocky, ever overconfident colleague. And yet, maybe it's just the fact that in all three cases a lone child is the escapee that niggles so persistently at the mother gene in Jane: two boys and a girl who--she can't shake the feeling--might once again become targets in whatever unfathomable game seems to be afoot. Meanwhile, medical examiner Maura Isles is on her long-planned visit to Julian Perkins, the brave and resourceful teenager she'd bonded with recently under extreme, near-fatal circumstances, and to whom her attachment has been ongoing. Here, too, the mother gene is in play. The reunion site is a special school named Evensong, designed to serve as a harborage for children traumatized by violence. Tucked away in a remote corner of Maine, surrounded by woods, it's further protected by a sophisticated security system. Not surprising, really, that Claire Ward, Will Yablonski and Teddy Clock should wind up under its beneficent wing. Nor is it surprising that someone clever, someone with malign intent, should also figure out Evensong's attraction. Suddenly, even with Rizzoli and Isles on hand, that which made Evensong a haven is reversed into a potential trap. Purplish prose and a wildly baroque ending won't deter a devoted fan base.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 1, 2012

Having withstood violence, the students at Evensong, a school deep in the Maine wilderness, prepare for careers in crime fighting. That's where Det. Jane Rizzoli decides to hide Teddy Clock when the rest of his foster family is murdered. The first in this best-selling series to boast the "Rizzoli & Isles" brand name in the title, this book will appear just as the third season of TNT's successful Rizzoli & Isles TV series is ending, so fans will be primed.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2012
Gerritsen's tenth novel featuring homicide investigator Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles gains extra depth and poignancy from its focus on children who have survived violence. Both chubby 14-year-old science geek Will Yablonski and impulsive, plainspoken 13-year-old Claire Ward are the lone survivors of their respective families, who were killed by professional hit men. But things take an even more horrific turn when their foster families are also murdered. Both kids are sent to Evensong, a boarding school in the Maine wilderness that houses victims of violence and teaches them crime-fighting skills, from archery to forensic science. It's at Evensong that they meet Isles, there to visit a 16-year-old boy who saved her life. Meanwhile, back in Boston, Rizzoli investigates the strange circumstances surrounding yet a third young survivor. When Evensong's school psychologist plummets to her death and the body of a sniper is found in the woods, both Rizzoli and Isles are increasingly convinced that all of the mayhem is being perpetrated from someone connected to the school. Gerritsen skillfully heightens the tension right up to the suspenseful ending. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The hit TV show based on Gerritsen's Rizzoli & Isles books, in addition to an all-out publicity campaign for her latest entry, may give this long-running series new legs.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2012

In their tenth outing (after The Silent Girl), Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles must deal with a case with links to the past. When a prominent Boston family is murdered, only 14-year-old foster child Teddy survives. Teddy is in fact a survivor twice over. He's only in the foster care system because his own family was killed a few years ago--with Teddy the only survivor. Jane doesn't buy the easy answer that her colleagues are pursuing. Neither does Maura, who encounters several other children with similar family histories. As Jane struggles to figure out the connection, Maura works to protect the kids (along with her own quasi-foster son), who are living at a Maine boarding school called Evensong. VERDICT Gerritsen pulls a lot of threads together but isn't completely successful at tying them up by book's end. Readers who haven't read the series before will be better served by backtracking to book one. That said, this is a fast-paced, intriguing mystery, and Gerritsen fans will be pleased to revisit Maura and Jane.--Jane Jorgenson, Madison P.L., WI

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.