The Silent Girl, Tess Gerritsen
Chinese culture and mythology intrigues us. It has depth, fantasy and history deeper than any other culture it seems and Tess Gerritsen delves into this morass of mythology and mysticism while unravelling a tale of murder and kidnapping. Good story.
Synopsis
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.
Richard says
You may not believe in ghosts but the unexplained or the unexplainable will bother you as you read this story.
The story is a thriller with figures from Chinese mythology playing roles that make you wonder as Gerritsen pulls you deeper and deeper into the unknown and the unexplainable. This is a detective story where Gerritsen’s well-known character Boston Police Detective Jane Rizzoli plays the starring role. Several times she is in imminent death situations only to escape because the heroine cannot die.
The tale is a classic who done it with suspects you are guilty as sin, on that page, only to have Gerritsen toss in new considerations, and new plausibilities on the next page.
Then the Chinese mythological characters, like the ‘Monkey of Vengeance and Justice’. He is reputed to be the guardian of the good using his sword of justice, forged centuries before to defend and save the good people being mortally threatened. Rizzoli is in this situation twice and even with all her sleuthing skills and experience cannot explain how she was saved.
A calamitous murder scene in a Chinatown greasy spoon, 20 years before, a supposedly open and shut murder-suicide leads to the broader plot about teenage girls being abducted. The Boston Police are stymied until Rizzoli takes on the case and is nearly killed twice.
Again, a polished and well-written story that will have you wondering. If you are superstitious and afraid of the dark, read it.
