The Bone Garden,
Tess Gerritsen
Synopsis
Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil – human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder. But whoever this nameless woman was, and whatever befell her, is knowledge lost to another time. . . .
Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, Norris Marshall, a talented but penniless student at Boston Medical College, has joined the ranks of local “resurrectionists”–those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. Yet even this ghoulish commerce pales beside the shocking murder of a nurse found mutilated on the university hospital grounds. And when a distinguished doctor meets the same grisly fate, Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect.
To prove his innocence, Norris must track down the only witness to have glimpsed the killer: Rose Connolly, a beautiful seamstress from the Boston slums who fears she may be the next victim. Joined by a sardonic, keenly intelligent young man named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Norris and Rose comb the city–from its grim cemeteries and autopsy suites to its glittering mansions and centers of Brahmin power–on the trail of a maniacal fiend who lurks where least expected . . . and who waits for his next lethal opportunity.
Richard says
There is no way to easily summarize, concisely capture, or succinctly grasp the essential body of this book. It is a masterpiece, a literary opus that must have taken author Tess Gerritsen months, if not years, to create.
The story crosses time barriers, reaching back into early 19th-century Boston, from the mystic misery and suspenseful scenes of the harbour’s foggy backdrop to what should have been esoteric and academic settings but which become the stage for murder, tension-filled pursuit, fog-shrouded gloom, and ominous foreboding dabbled by the frivolous banter of young men, frittering away jocular moments as young men are wont to do, gossiping and joking away in any era, any society.
In The Bone Garden, this frivolity is a literary valve that releases the pressure built up by the ceaseless barrage and comprehensive tarpaulin of tension and suspense relating to the horrible crimes committed by an assailant with medical expertise. But with each successive victim, the professionalism and delicacy of that training is replaced by outright gutting of the anatomy and shredding the flesh with no consideration of any professionalism or medical finesse.
It’s a murder story whose pursuit crosses centuries. Gerritsen manages this fascinating thesis with continuous and relentless building of tension and suspense.
The book’s medical scenes, authentic to the letter, are horrible to read. Remember, Gerritsen is a retired surgeon who inserts her expertise throughout her stories to elevate their authenticity and tighten the tension as she builds her suspense.
Interspersed throughout the story are Gerritsen’s social philosophies regarding women, misogyny and female socio-economic and political discrimination. A reader will be hard-pressed to control feelings of justifiable anger against the males dominating the society of that era.
As justifiable anger grows, the story rises above being a personal crusade where personal or intimate philosophies might replace the tale. Gerritzen sticks to her story wonderfully and steadfastly. Continuously building it, developing its many layers with the mortar of historical facts taken from actual real life: there was an Oliver Wendell Holmes; there was a medical college in Boston; there resurrectionist grave robbers whose work advanced medical developments against arguably endless luddite social criticism of the time.
Gerritsen weaves a historical and suspenseful tapestry of crime and violence across the ages but retains its roots in the Boston environs, much earlier and then later. She tells a great story, captivating readers and holding them with her vice of tension and suspense, page after page.
It is an excellent book, one which I feel deserves the label “opus” rather than just ‘best-seller’ because a reader can feel the energy devoted to the story; they can feel the layers being assembled, building the richness of the tale. This isn’t just a book. It is a composite of socio-cultural blocks that build a monument to the intricacies and complexities of humanity, from its base depravity to its glorious redemption of love and family bonds.
A marvellous read!
