The Surgeon (with Bonus Content) (Rizzoli & Isles)

by Tess Gerritsen

[empressbrooke]

I'm guessing, based on the number of reserves this book had at my library when I went looking for it, that many people are discovering Tess Gerritsen these days because of the new TNT show, Rizzoli & Isles. It's based on Gerritsen's books, and it's a fun, though not original, police detective procedural. Angie Harmon's Jane Rizzoli doesn't seem that different from Angie Harmon's Lindsay Boxer (from another police procedural book-to-TV adaptation, based on James Patterson's Women's Murder Club), and Sasha Alexander's Maura Isles seems like a copycat of Temperance Brennan on Bones (also a book-to-TV adaptation, of course).

So of course, being the reader that I am, I was curious to see if the show's characters were faithfully drawn from the pages of the books, or if they were merely loose interpretations. This first book in the series doesn't even introduce Isles yet, so I wasn't able to pass judgment on her, but Rizzoli is present from the beginning. She's almost relegated to being a supporting character; Detective Thomas Moore is the protagonist here. Angie Harmon isn't a bad visual representation of book-Rizzoli; aside from the book's boxy pantsuits and perhaps a few inches in height, they seem pretty similar. The show loses nearly all of Rizzoli's defensiveness and acerbic attitude, but I'm wondering if the character changes enough over the course of the books to warrant that difference.

As for the book itself, it's got everything a fan of detective/serial killer/procedural thrillers would want. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it's definitely a great example of the genre. The plot shows up very vaguely in the show's first episode, but the stories are so different that neither is going to spoil the other. I've got the second book in the series on reserve at the library and look forward to meeting book-Isles.