The Killing Place (Rizzoli & Isles)

by Tess Gerritsen

[Leah]

When medical examiner Maura Isles decides to throw caution to the wind and join an old-school friend Doug on a trip to a ski-lodge after attending a conference in Wyoming, the last thing she expects is to end up stuck in a blizzard. When Doug, Maura, and the rest of their party take shelter in an abandoned house, they're surprised to find that it looks as though it was only recently lived in. Each of the twelve houses in Kingdom Come are all similarly spooky and stand empty, and with no electricity or phone signals, Maura and co. find themselves stranded relying on someone noticing they're missing and coming to find them. When Detective Jane Rizzoli is notified of her friends absence, she flies out to Wyoming to try to find Maura. Will Jane be able to find her friend and just why were the houses in Kingdom Come left abandoned?

I have to admit, I first started reading a Tess Gerritsen book by accident. My mum had bought The Surgeon and because nothing else was capturing my attention I decided to give it a read because the blurb sounded interesting. Instantly, I was hooked, despite the fact I generally read chick lit and nothing but chick lit. I finished reading the book that same night and went out the next day to buy the rest of the books in the series (The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish and The Mephisto Club) and I devoured them just as quickly. I then had to wait until 2009 for the latest Rizzoli/Isles book Keeping The Dead and I loved that, too. I couldn't believe just how fantastic crime/thriller books could be. So when I saw a new Isles/Rizzoli thriller coming in 2010, I pre-ordered it as soon as possible and I eagerly awaited its release.

Over the course of the Rizzoli/Isles series there has been many changes, I think, to the writing of the books. The first book, The Surgeon, is completely different to the other book mainly because Rizzoli was meant to die so it wasn't focused solely on her. Maura Isles wasn't present, either, until The Apprentice, and even then it was in a minor capacity. I think the series as a whole took off from The Sinner (book three), but you ought to start at the beginning because those first two books are stunning. The books swing from focusing solely on either Jane or Maura, to focusing on them both equally and in the last two books I think the focus has been equal but more at a distance than usual, giving the series a wider berth and allowing in a bit more scope for the plot. They've all been cracking books though; the only one I have doubt over is The Sinner because I didn't truly understand it, but bar that I've found them all convincing and full of twists and turns.

I do always worry that the next Rizzoli and Isles book will be the one that changes my mind about crime fiction and that I'll suddenly stop enjoying it, so while I was excited to start The Killing Place, I was also worried. However it took me only 5 pages to get sucked in and that was that, I couldn't put it down. The book is very quick off the mark, opening up with a Prologue which sets the scene for the book before diving right in to Maura at the airport, just before she flies out to Wyoming, where she has an argument with Daniel Brophy (her priest of a boyfriend), meaning that when Doug, an old college friend, invites her to a skiing lodge, Maura decides to be reckless for once and goes along with it. And that's where Maura, Doug, Grace (Doug's daughter), Aldo (a friend of Doug's) and Aldo's girlfriend find themselves, trapped in the spooky village called Kingdom Come, after a snowstorm leaves them stranded. After a terrible accident, the group find themselves in a race against time to get themselves rescued despite the fact no one knows they're there. Maura decides that someone is bound to come looking for her eventually, but with spooky things happening in Kingdom Come, it could be too late.

There's quite a lot that goes on in the first half of The Killing Place. There's the overall spookiness of Kingdom Come, which begs the question of where everyone from the little village went, and why they were in such a hurry to go, even leaving plates of food and pets behind. It's an incredibly complex plot, but it never gets confusing at all and not at any point does the pace of the book slow at all. In fact, it's fairly relentless as not only do Maura and co. have to find a way out of Kingdom Come, but they also try to figure out what is going on. Plus Jane Rizzoli is herself trying to find Maura so there's a lot flying up in the air and what makes it worse is that we the reader know what's going on with Maura whilst Jane tries her best to unravel it all and rescue Maura from wherever she is. It all adds up for a fascinating read. I did worry, from the Prologue, it may have been a more religious read but it wasn't at all and I was pleasantly surprised with how everything panned out. In fact, just when I thought everything had been tied up nicely, and was just settling down, there was one final twist which was unexpected to say the least.

The one thing that needs to be consistent though with a series, is that each of the recurring characters do have to stay pretty much the same throughout. Maura has to stay Maura, Jane has to stay Jane, etc because if either of them had any sort of big personality change, it wouldn't be right. So far all of the recurring characters, but most importantly Maura and Jane, have stayed fairly true to their characters throughout the series and that continues with The Killing Place. I must admit, I am now tiring of Maura's "relationship" with priest Daniel Brophy because there's only so far you can take a relationship when one of the people in it are dedicated to God, as Daniel clearly is. Thankfully scenes including both Maura and Daniel were minimal but it doesn't seem as if it could go on for much longer without becoming repetitive. It was nice to see Maura going out of her comfort zone, despite the fact it leads her to the middle of nowhere with no one around to help. One thing I do love, though, is the relationship between Jane and her husband Gabriel, they've been through loads together and I love seeing them together, they work well together and having a husband seems to have mellowed Jane a tad. She's not as rough around the edges as she was in The Surgeon. We're introduced to some new characters in The Killing Place, some good, some bad, and an old one returns in the shape of Anthony Sansome. Gerritsen has built a fantastic set of characters, that's for sure.

The Killing Place was a fantastic read, and I literally could not put it down. Like Stephen King says, it gripped me by the neck and refused to let go. It can, in case you're wondering, be read as a stand-alone book however you'll miss really getting to know the characters and you won't be aware of what they've been through previously, so I would strongly recommend you start at the beginning, it's not as if you're going to regret it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I was so sad to see it end because it means I now have to wait at least another year for the next Rizzoli/Isles thriller and I just don't think I can wait that long. When you have writing as good as Gerritsen's to read, you want to read it all day long, so I think a re-read of the entire series could well be in order pretty soon.