Review - The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen

The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Time Taken To Read - 3 days

Blurb From Goodreads

Every crime scene tells a story. Some keep you awake at night. Others haunt your dreams. The grisly display homicide cop Jane Rizzoli finds in Boston’s Chinatown will do both.

In the murky shadows of an alley lies a female’s severed hand. On the tenement rooftop above is the corpse belonging to that hand, a red-haired woman dressed all in black, her head nearly severed. Two strands of silver hair—not human—cling to her body. They are Rizzoli’s only clues, but they’re enough for her and medical examiner Maura Isles to make the startling discovery: that this violent death had a chilling prequel.

Nineteen years earlier, a horrifying murder-suicide in a Chinatown restaurant left five people dead. But one woman connected to that massacre is still alive: a mysterious martial arts master who knows a secret she dares not tell, a secret that lives and breathes in the shadows of Chinatown. A secret that may not even be human. Now she’s the target of someone, or something, deeply and relentlessly evil.

Cracking a crime resonating with bone-chilling echoes of an ancient Chinese legend, Rizzoli and Isles must outwit an unseen enemy with centuries of cunning—and a swift, avenging blade.

My Review

A murder-suicide from 19 years ago seems to keep popping up in relation to a new homicide. The corpse is almost decapitated and her hand is completely removed. On the corpse is two strands of silver hair that can't be identified, human or animal? Soon secrets from the past and tales of Chinese legend come to the front and Isles and Rizzoli have to work through it all to find out what is going on and who the killer is.

The is a brilliant story, I loved the Chinese legends and stories and couldn't wait to find out what the link was with the past and the present. The story for the most part is written in third person view but for individual chapters and with one character it is written in the first person narrative. Normally this kind of switching would annoy me as I like things to be consistent but it works really well and I felt added to the story.

The story starts off fairly quickly with action from the first chapter (setting up a background for the story to come). We also see a different side to Rizzoli in this book and how unusual her and Dr. Isles friendship is and the pressures it can face.

So much to like and enjoy in this book and as always the thing I love, there was no loose ends. I got all the answers to my questions and forgot how much I enjoyed Tess Gerritsens writing. 5/5 for me and to be honest you could read this as a stand alone but if you like clarity on your characters and how their relationships came to be I would check out the previous books.

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