The Silent Girl

Tess Gerritsen writes best when she keeps herself in a first-person narrative (such as Iris Fang) than when she writes in the third-person (following Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles). Other authors have written that first-person narratives are a blessing and a curse... you are forever trapped in that person, to write only what they see, hear, and feel. In the first-person, if they don't see it, it may never have happened. Likewise, whatever bias, perspective, and insights they have colors their vision.

Iris Fang comes across as a very real, very formidable, middle-aged Asian woman with a lifetime of memories and experiences. It is when Iris narrates that I feel most connected to The Silent Girl. Her perserverance to honor her husband's show more memory and that of an innocent man is what gives heart to this novel.

Daniel Tam is a wonderful character with his own substantial role to play. Hopefully Tess Gerritsen continues to make him a part of the Rizzoli & Isles series.

As a 38yo educated white male reader of the series, I have always identified most with Frost. His hardships in relationships, being a partner to Jane Rizzoli, being a hurt man looking in and finding Iris Fang, I found Frost to be one of my favorite underdogs in literature. Soft-spoken, not destined to stand in the spotlight of Gerritsen's writings, he tries to uncover the truth while remaining compassionate to the victims. Frost's brief interplay with Iris Fang was a warm note in this novel.

On the whole, The Silent Girl is one of my most favorite novels by Tess Gerritsen, but it is not without flaws. Her uneven writing style between chapters as she narrates between Iris Fang, Maura Isles, and Jane Rizzoli is a little jarring. Sometimes I think I can tell when she's writing with passion (from the heart) or writing to move the narrative along (from the head). The final chapters of The Silent Girl seem hurried and cliche. "Sorry, Tess, but guys just don't leave keys hanging around on wall hooks. Most normal men toss their keys on the dresser along with the wallet, on the nightstand, or the nearest available table to the door."

I'd give The Silent Girl 4.5 or 5 stars, but the final chapter took it down a notch for me. Life is rarely neat-and-clean. In both real life and crimes, answers are never served up on a plate. Casey Anthony, OJ Simpson or Amanda Knox are all high-profile cases with no clean cut answers. Only in the fantasy world of Rizzoli & Isles do father-son killers come clean about their crimes. It's for this reason that I look Tami Hoag or Saul Bellow for realism that Tess fails to provide. show less

The story starts with a hand in Chinatown (Boston) and gets progressively more complicated from there. It includes both the mystical and the concrete and along the way the author gives the reader quite a healthy dose of Chinese lore.

Unfortunately I thought that the novel was a bit pedestrian. Though the ending wasn't quite what I was expecting, still the majority of the plot just wasn't surprising to me (perhaps I've read too many mysteries).

Of course, the writing was as great as usual for a Tess Gerritsen novel. Generally she writes very, very tight novels plot wise. Though, there was one subplot concerning Maura that seemed to be left hanging (and actually it was the plot in the book that I most wanted resolved in some way or show more another). It also seems that Ms. Gerritsen is letting Maura and Jane be the central character in alternating novels, because in [Ice Cold] Maura had the main plot line, and here Jane does.

I did find it happily surprising that this novel was much more of a Mystery than a lot of the books in the Rizzoli & Isles series. (For example, again, [Ice Cold] was much more of a Thriller than a Mystery). After all, it's good to know that the fictional BPD actually investigates mysteries instead of simply chasing around people with guns and getting poked in the palms of the hands constantly.

For me three stars equals an average book, and with this book it was right on the edge between a three and a four, but, as I said before the ending wasn't quite as predictable as I thought it would be, and since the writing was superb it eeked out a four. And just remember, if you like intricately woven mysteries this is for you, but, if you don't like sorta graphic mysteries then it isn't. show less

Tess Gerritsen writes best when she keeps herself in a first-person narrative (such as Iris Fang) than when she writes in the third-person (following Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles). Other authors have written that first-person narratives are a blessing and a curse... you are forever trapped in that person, to write only what they see, hear, and feel. In the first-person, if they don't see it, it may never have happened. Likewise, whatever bias, perspective, and insights they have colors their vision.

Iris Fang comes across as a very real, very formidable, middle-aged Asian woman with a lifetime of memories and experiences. It is when Iris narrates that I feel most connected to The Silent Girl. Her perserverance to honor her husband's show more memory and that of an innocent man is what gives heart to this novel.

Daniel Tam is a wonderful character with his own substantial role to play. Hopefully Tess Gerritsen continues to make him a part of the Rizzoli & Isles series.

As a 38yo educated white male reader of the series, I have always identified most with Frost. His hardships in relationships, being a partner to Jane Rizzoli, being a hurt man looking in and finding Iris Fang, I found Frost to be one of my favorite underdogs in literature. Soft-spoken, not destined to stand in the spotlight of Gerritsen's writings, he tries to uncover the truth while remaining compassionate to the victims. Frost's brief interplay with Iris Fang was a warm note in this novel.

On the whole, The Silent Girl is one of my most favorite novels by Tess Gerritsen, but it is not without flaws. Her uneven writing style between chapters as she narrates between Iris Fang, Maura Isles, and Jane Rizzoli is a little jarring. Sometimes I think I can tell when she's writing with passion (from the heart) or writing to move the narrative along (from the head). The final chapters of The Silent Girl seem hurried and cliche. "Sorry, Tess, but guys just don't leave keys hanging around on wall hooks. Most normal men toss their keys on the dresser along with the wallet, on the nightstand, or the nearest available table to the door."

I'd give The Silent Girl 4.5 or 5 stars, but the final chapter took it down a notch for me. Life is rarely neat-and-clean. In both real life and crimes, answers are never served up on a plate. Casey Anthony, OJ Simpson or Amanda Knox are all high-profile cases with no clean cut answers. Only in the fantasy world of Rizzoli & Isles do father-son killers come clean about their crimes. It's for this reason that I look Tami Hoag or Saul Bellow for realism that Tess fails to provide. show less

Something inhuman is stalking the alleys and rooftops of Boston’s Chinatown, something swift, mythical and seemingly bent on exacting deadly vengeance for a two-decade old massacre in which an illegal immigrant killed four people before turning the gun on himself. Or did he?

Boston PD detective Jane Rizzoli teams up with her friend Maura Isles, the medical examiner, in a case that involves present murders with ties to a series of missing girls and a 19 year old murder suicide, yet the deeper they dig the more they begin the doubt the accepted story of the old killings and to discover incongruous but lethal links between past and present.

And just ahead of them every step of the way is the barely glimpsed Monkey King, an old Chinese show more legend come to life, and despite the assistance of a Chinese detective, they are getting very little information from the inhabitants of Chinatown who remain convinced there is a mystery still to be solved and injustice to be righted.

Martial arts, missing girls, paedophiles, post mortems, Tess Gerritsen brings all the threads together and delves into her own cultural legacy to bring us the ninth in the Rizzoli and Isles series, another first-class page turner. show less

The ninth book in the Rizzoli & Isles series begins with the discovery of a severed hand. One of the participants in a ghost tour thinks it is fake - until the blood starts dripping.

Rizzoli and her partner are called in a discover a woman with a severed hand dead on the roof. Dressed in black and carrying no identification, the only clues are some unidentified hairs on the victim's body and the opinion that the woman was killed with a very sharp sword.

Meanwhile, Maura Isles is testifying against a police officer in the death of a suspect in custody. The victim appears to have been severely beaten before dying in the back of the police car. Maura's testimony is not making her at all popular with other police officers.

Rizzoli's show more investigation leads to a nineteen-year-old murder-suicide that happened in the Red Phoenix restaurant which used to occupy the building where the body was found. There is a woman in Chinatown who is sure that the police got it wrong. She believes that the supposed killer was framed for the killing. Her husband was the waiter on duty and one of the victims.

As Rizzoli looks into that case, she discovers that there is another seemingly connected crime. The revenge seeking woman had a thirteen-year-old daughter disappear a couple of years before the massacre. One of the other victims has a daughter disappear some months after the massacre.

Rizzoli has a lot of questions about the new body and the old case. Why did a couple of the victims have Italian food in their digestive systems when they were eating in a Chinese restaurant? Was the colleague of the leader the Irish mob who was in for take-out the one the hit was aimed at? Where did the widow and daughter of the supposed shooter go after the crime?

The story was filled with action. I enjoyed the way Chinese mythology played into the story. show less

The problem with a book that's written this well is that it really gets to you. When it's written in the city you live in and about 12-yr-old girls disappearing when you have a 12-yr-old daughter, well, that doesn't help matters. To be honest, if I'd known that that was a part of it I might not have picked this up; it's just too close to home. And yet it was so well written that I'm not sorry I did. (Well, until tonight when I start having nightmares, but that's another story.)

I remember reading one of Tess Gerritsen's earliest novels, back before Rizzoli & Isles, and being impressed. When the Rizzoli & Isles show came on I didn't put the two together, not having realized that Gerritsen had moved on beyond the medical thrillers. I show more sought out one of her R&I books and was reminded at how good of a writer she was -- but the suspense was so much that I didn't go back right away. For some reason this week I've been on a keep-me-on-the-edge thriller kick, however, so I specifically picked up _The Silent Girl_.

One of the first things about the R&I series is that there are some distinct differences between the books and the show, particularly in the roster of Rizzoli's colleagues. In the books, Rizzoli also is married and has a child. With that said, the characterizations of both Rizzoli and Isles are so well portrayed on the TNT show that it was hard not to picture those actresses as I read. As other reviewers have said, the focus here is more on Rizzoli, although I didn't see that as a problem. Their relationship was a major thread of the book, at least enough so for me to be satisfied. The Chinatown/martial arts piece was the more prevailing part and excellently handled. Which makes sense, of course, since Gerritsen herself is Chinese. (Although, funnily enough, the Rizzoli voice is so strong that I forgot this and was instead picturing her as Italian, but that's neither here nor there.) I also really enjoyed the strong female characters in this book, particularly Iris Fang. And the way that it all came together in the end.

Saying too much more would give it away and I don't want to do that so I'll stop it here, but I highly recommend that you give this book a try. show less

The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen is one of the best books in the Rizzoli and Isles series. Gerritsen relies less on the stark terror triggered by serial killers in earlier Rizzoli and Isles novels and continues with the cultivation of complex relationships between characters as witnessed most recently in The Ice Box. The interweaving of historical cases, strains on Gerritsen’s central characters’ relationships and cross cultural issues creates a multi-faceted story that is sure to hold your attention from beginning to end.