Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice-for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Gerritsen always does well on the charts, but this masterful outing should rocket her into the top bracket of suspense writers.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Gerritsen leaves out her great arias on the poetry of the inner organs and the sweet hell of death that so ennobles The Sinner, but she keeps such a tight rein on her inspired plot that we don’t miss them. Pregnant Jane Rizzoli, who buddies with Maura to help find answers to her dilemma, is close to term-and one wonders if she too may be slated for death. Meanwhile, Maura is pursued by a handsome cop who has heavy family problems. The story turns on Maura’s perhaps real mother, a fake schizophrenic locked up in a mental hospital for murder, who tells Maura she’s slated to die the same way her sister did. Who is this dead woman? Gerritsen spins out the answer slowly, but we’ll tell you that she’s Maura’s unbeknownst twin sister-both were orphans, adopted at birth by separate families-but also part of a grisly adoption racket that involves the serial murders of pregnant women all around the country. Even Maura is astounded to see her own body as a vic. They’ve just seen her dead, shot through the head in a car in front of her next door neighbor’s house. As she gets out of her car and approaches the police, her neighbors and friendly cops stare at her aghast. After a week’s vacation in Paris, Maura returns to Boston to find flashing police cruisers in front of her house. Once again Boston Homicide Detective Jane Rizzoli plays second fiddle to “Queen of the Dead” Medical Examiner Maura Isles ( The Sinner, 2003), who gets to open up all the vics-unless they look just like her. Doc Gerritsen rises to her best yet, skirting neatly around the cliché plotting usually tied to serial killers.
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