Location: Home > Art, Architecture & Photography > Gerritsen, Tess > The Bone Garden

The Bone Garden

Author: Tess Gerritsen
Publisher: Bantam Press
Category: Book

List Price: ~~Ł14.99~~
Buy New: Ł7.90
You Save: Ł7.09 (47%)

New (24) Used (8) from Ł6.63

Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

19 reviews
Sales Rank: 3847

Media: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.7

ISBN: 0593057775
EAN: 9780593057773
ASIN: 0593057775

Publication Date: January 14, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new book dispatched from stock in the UK

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 6-10 of 19

« PREV

1 2 3 4

Doesn't work April 5, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful

It's my understanding that Gerritsen has been writing for quite a while but none of her books really took off until she created the Isles/Rizzoli series. Before them, romantic thrillers that really didn't do all that well. I tried a good 100 pages of this book before I gave up and won't be buying anymore of her books unless they feature Isles or Rizzoli. This is the second time I've tried one of her books that don't feature them and they really don't work. She should stick to what she's good at, this was second rate and didn't work for me at all.

4 out of 5 stars

Naughty Tess! March 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Despite this NOT being a Isles/Rizzoli novel (and I bought it thinking it was from the dust jacket) I forgive Tess Gerritsen because this is SUCH a good story. The plotting is brilliant, the story thrilling, you warm to the characters both in the past and present and the ending is superb. I thoroughly enjoyed this book even if the dust jacket was, and I am being polite, misleading.

5 out of 5 stars

Absolutely riveting March 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Rarely do I find a book that I simply cannot put down, but this is one. I have read all of Tess Gerritsen's books and thought this would be a Rizzoli/Isles story again; I was disappointed when I read the synopsis when I realised it wasn't but oh how I was hooked from the very first page. I particularly loved the past and present story line and Rose Connolly was a wonderful heroine. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Fabulous stuff.

4 out of 5 stars

Medical mysteries offering twist to a historical thriller March 13, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

In her 11th medical thriller, "The Bone Garden," Maine physician Tess Gerritsen turns from the exploits of Boston detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles to give readers a historical thriller about a serial killer - known as the West End Reaper - loose on the streets of 1830s Boston.
more stories like this

The tale of crime from a bygone era emerges as the parallel plot to the modern-day story of a divorcee who finds human bones buried in her Weston yard. Isles appears briefly, but her presence is not essential to Gerritsen's story. Soon the protagonist, teacher Julia Hamill, is spending much of her summer break in Maine going through old letters and other papers with the octogenarian relative of her house's previous owner.

Gerritsen has won praise for her prior medical thrillers, and her previous effort, "The Mephisto Club," was a bestseller. "The Bone Garden," however, does not quite come together. The parallel stories are uneven, with the greatest weight going to the 19th-century murder mystery. The modern-day tale is part narrative device and part love story, but it isn't hook enough to justify its existence, and the plot around Julia's life is barely developed, leaving the reader to wonder if it is necessary at all.

The historical murder mystery fares better, but the suspense sometimes lags. This plot centers on an Irish immigrant, Rose Connolly, and on a group of medical students studying at the hospital where Rose's sister, Aurnia, died in childbirth. Aurnia's husband is a brute with little interest in raising the baby girl, so Rose takes charge of her niece, Margaret, and is determined to keep her from mysterious parties equally bent on snatching her. Medical student Norris Marshall, a poor farm boy from Belmont out of place among his gentleman classmates, takes an interest in Rose's plight. Along the way, people associated with the young aunt turn up dead.

Norris is earnest and idealistic, admirable traits, to be sure, but a tad boring in a hero. Rose is plucky, panicked, devastatingly poor, and a good deal more interesting than Norris. Gerritsen also includes a fictionalized Oliver Wendell Holmes, the physician and author who was the father of the famed jurist, in the group of medical students, and that adds some spice.

Gerritsen, as always, puts her medical training to ghoulish use in her descriptions of both the murders and the dismayingly frequent deaths in childbirth in the hospital's maternity ward. These vivid descriptions are not for the faint-hearted.

Indeed, despite the book's shortcomings, the medical practices that Gerritsen depicts are fascinating. In addition to the well-drawn scenes in the hospital, she takes readers on grisly journeys with a procurer of cadavers, to be used in the training of medical students. Here, too, she calls on her experience as a physician to render situations in excruciatingly horrific detail. Boston readers will also appreciate her description of the mid-19th-century city and its environs.

"The Bone Garden" ends with some neat plot twists, both in the murder mystery and the mystery of maternal deaths. Much as readers might wish that Gerritsen had sharpened the thriller and done more with the contemporary story, they will come away from the book with an appreciation of the evolution of medical practice.

3 out of 5 stars

Not bad, but not great either March 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Usually I can't wait to get back to a Gerritsen novel - this one didn't raise the same sense of anticipation and I wasn't sure why since I normally enjoy historically based crime. Reading Mrs E Cochrane's review was interesting and I think might explain the problem. I've never read any of Gerritsen's earlier works (pre-her-series-characters)but whilst I was reading this book I started to suspect that it had been written much earlier in her career prior to the suspense thrillers she's known for now.