Il chirurgo (2001)

I'm guessing, based on the number of reserves this book had at my library when I went looking for it, that many people are discovering Tess Gerritsen these days because of the new TNT show, Rizzoli & Isles. It's based on Gerritsen's books, and it's a fun, though not original, police detective procedural. Angie Harmon's Jane Rizzoli doesn't seem that different from Angie Harmon's Lindsay Boxer (from another police procedural book-to-TV adaptation, based on James Patterson's Women's Murder Club), and Sasha Alexander's Maura Isles seems like a copycat of Temperance Brennan on Bones (also a book-to-TV adaptation, of course).

So of course, being the reader that I am, I was curious to see if the show's characters were faithfully drawn from the pages of the books, or if they were merely loose interpretations. This first book in the series doesn't even introduce Isles yet, so I wasn't able to pass judgment on her, but Rizzoli is present from the beginning. She's almost relegated to being a supporting character; Detective Thomas Moore is the protagonist here. Angie Harmon isn't a bad visual representation of book-Rizzoli; aside from the book's boxy pantsuits and perhaps a few inches in height, they seem pretty similar. The show loses nearly all of Rizzoli's defensiveness and acerbic attitude, but I'm wondering if the character changes enough over the course of the books to warrant that difference.

As for the book itself, it's got everything a fan of detective/serial killer/procedural thrillers would want. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it's definitely a great example of the genre. The plot shows up very vaguely in the show's first episode, but the stories are so different that neither is going to spoil the other. I've got the second book in the series on reserve at the library and look forward to meeting book-Isles. ( )

Enjoyable. Hate Rizzoli as a person; love her as a character. For once, a book where cops doing naughty things are called on it. ( )

This is a very decent mystery story. The only odd thing is that it's labeled as "Jane Rizzoli & Maura Isles Series #1). This is odd because the character of Maura Isles never appears in the book. And Jane Rizzoli appears to be secondary to another character, a Detective Thomas Moore. So I spent most of the book wondering why Rizzoli was secondary and Isles was absent. A decided distraction from the plot of the story. ( )

This was what I needed. As I said before not my normal genre. I read this genre a lot years ago. It is not mystery but more thriller type.
Really enjoyed it and I wish I'd had more books like this so i could pick another one..
One thing I was wondering about. You see that the book sometimes is called Jane Rizolli book number 1. but she doesn't really have the main lead in this book. I guess people were so interested by her, or the author? so that she decided to write more of her?
What I liked is that this Jane Rizolli is not beautiful, men are not attracted to her, hallelujah and she makes mistakes? WTH! I love a character like that as the main one in a book.
Really want to read the next books of this series now. ( )

Trigger warnings: rape, mutilation, medical details (both descriptions of stuff like cancer and descriptions of accidents/operations).

That had to come first, because I spent much of this book wishing I had something firm and indestructible to crawl into, to keep me safe. The details are just horrifying -- it reminds me very much of my experience with Val McDermid's work. And, as with that, I had to read to the end to find out who the killer/torturer was, before I could begin to feel okay again. (The part of me that's done a course in Crime Fiction remembers that the end of a crime novel typically ends with the criminal being contained or killed, and therefore that provides a feeling of safety and the reassertion of the rules of society, for a reader.)

I wasn't really a fan of the characters' attitudes to rape. The idea that rape makes the victim belong to the attacker in some way is just repugnant, and the idea that what makes a woman a woman is their womb is just -- ugh. It seemed to be an ongoing theme in the story, rather than an opinion expressed by just one or two of the characters.

Overall there was a lot that upset/troubled me, and despite Sasha Alexander being in it, I don't think I'm going to watch the tv series. It's not actually a bad crime/mystery book: it's very good in that sense, and I'd recommend it to people who like, for example, Val McDermid. But it was just not the kind of thing I should be reading at all, and I'm going to steer clear. ( )