The Sinner

...that's a very good thing. Instead of walking the craft fair and barbequing...I got to stay in and read...the whole book.

I have read both other books in this series, The Surgeon and The Apprentice...and The Sinner...is definitely my favorite to date. Very interesting plot, intermingling of characters, alot of twists and turns.

I'm not an avid fad of reviews that tell you alot about a book so I won't.

It's a great mystery/thriller.

Just enjoy. I know I did.


Exciting and emotionally deep   October 23, 2003
booksforabuck (Dallas)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Dr. Maura Isles sees a lot of death--the cops even called her Queen of the Dead. Still, the two nuns, one murdered, the other near death, are a little much to take. When she discovers that the younger nun had recently given birth, the mystery seems largely solved. But deeper currents run through the mystery and soon the feds bring in evidence connecting this and other murders to a massacre that took place in distant India. Isles pushes herself to continue the investigation, to find the possible connection. What she finds is more damaging than she could have imagined. In a strange way, even Isles becomes a victim.

Detective Jane Rizzoli suspects that she may be pregnant as a result of a brief affair with a fed. The autopsy on the dead nun's baby pushes her to the limit. But she swears she'll find out the truth. The truths she finds, however, are about something deeper than simply crime.

Author Tess Gerritsen writes an emotionally compelling and exciting adventure. Both Isles and Rizzoli are sympathetic characters caught up in the aftereffects of terrible crimes and in their own emotional nightmares. Each has built a protective shell, but the mystery that they uncover together shreds those shells, leaving them exposed to a world more terrible than even they had wanted to believe. Gerritsen's highly professional writing and her obvious technical understanding of the medical procedures adds to the reader's enjoyment of this exciting story.

A prologue gives the reader more information than the protagonists enjoy about the motives behind the mystery, I'm not sure this was necessary or helpful, but it does add a different type of suspense to the story as we wonder how Isles and Rizzoli will be able to trace the murders back to their cause. THE SINNER is an interesting and emotionally satisfying story. Once I started it, I found I couldn't do anything else until I'd finished it.


The Queen of the Dead is on a Case of Murder Most Evil   August 15, 2010
D. Rowland (a Cool Dry Place)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

On a chilly Massachusetts morning someone broke into the chapel of Our Lady of Divine Light and brutally murdered the only novice cloistered there and critically injured an aging nun. There appears to be no motive and the elderly nuns who live at the convent are no help.

Boston Medical Examiner Maura Isles and homicide detective Jane Rizzoli are called to the scene and they are faced with not only a brutal crime, but a perplexing one as well that has them asking how someone got past the locked gates and why were the two nuns in the chapel so late at night?

And the questions only increase when Isles does an autopsy of the novice and finds she had given birth shortly before she was murdered. The discovery sets off a search for the baby and it's found dead within the grounds of the Abbey. Then the body of a mutilated woman is discovered in a rat invested tenement far from the chapel. This woman had her face, hands, and feet removed. Why?

Isles and Rizzoli are again called out to a murder scene. They manage to connect the very different crimes and find a trail of horror and corporate misdeeds that lead to a village in India where something horrible happened and many died. They have uncovered something that someone will do anything to keep hidden.

The details of the murder scenes and what happened in India are quite graphic, plus there is violence in this book, so expect to squirm a little. There is suspense and tension in this story as well, so expect a few thrills and chills Also Gerritsen delves deeper into the lives of Isles, the so called Queen of the Dead, and Rizzoli than she has in books gone before, which I found added a very human face to this fast moving thriller.


fantastic yet shocking medical thriller   August 22, 2003
Harriet Klausner
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

It's only four days before Christmas and the citizens of Boston are in an uproar because two nuns in a cloistered abbey are bludgeoned with one dead and the other barely alive. Boston Medical Examiner Dr. Maura Isles discovers that Sister Camille gave birth to a stillborn deformed son. The other nun that was attacked, Sister Ursula was only back in the abbey a year after doing nursing work at a leper colony in India. She remains in intensive care but the doctors aren't hopeful that she will recover.

Maura is called out on another case when a woman is shot to death, her hands and feet are amputated, and her facial skin peeled away. The woman also has some strange lesions on her body and after exhaustive study, they learn she was suffering from Hansen's Disease. A vice president of a company that has a factory near the leper's colony is found shot to death, the victim of an assassin just before he was scheduled to talk to the Justice Department. All three of these cases are linked and once that connection is discovered, the police will probably know who the killer is.

Tess Gerritsen has joined the ranks of Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs with this fantastic and shocking medical thriller. Jane Rizzoli, one of the more popular Boston detectives, plays a secondary role in THE SINNER because she is as concerned about her unexpected pregnancy as she is about these cases. Dr. Maura Isles is the star of this tale because it is her esoteric medical knowledge that is needed if the case is to be solved.

Harriet Klausner


Very Clever   March 14, 2004
N. Sausser (California)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

Two nuns are brutally attacked within the walls of a cloistered convent (one of the nuns survives the attack and the reason she survives is revealed eventually and it just blew my mind. Very, very clever). Detective Jane Rizzoli and Medical Examiner Maura Isles are among the first on the scene. At first glance, it seems obvious what happened. One of the nuns who was attacked was young and attractive and had recently given birth. The priest for the nuns is also young and attractive...but no. There is more to this mystery. Much more. The pages of this book just fly by. I have enjoyed Gerritsen's previous novels, but she has outdone herself with this one. I hated to see it come to an end. An exceptionally good read.