Showing posts with label Tess Gerritsen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tess Gerritsen. Show all posts

Nov 24, 2015

First Chapter: Playing with Fire by Tess Gerritsen

Bibliophile By the Sea hosts First Chapter, First Paragraph every Tuesday. Share the first paragraph(s) of your current read or book interest, with information for readers. Also share a teaser from the book with Teaser Tuesday at A Daily Rhythm.

My choice this week is a library book:
Playing with Fire: A Novel by Tess Gerritsen, published October 27, 2015 by Ballantine
Genre: thriller
Source: library
A beautiful violinist is haunted by a very old piece of music she finds in a strange antique shop in Rome.

The first time Julia Ansdell picks up The Incendio Waltz, she knows it’s a strikingly unusual composition. But while playing the piece, Julia blacks out and awakens to find her young daughter implicated in acts of surprising violence. And when she travels to Venice to find the previous owner of the music, she uncovers a dark secret that involves dangerously powerful people—a family who would stop at nothing to keep Julia from bringing the truth to light
(publisher)

First chapter, first paragraph:
From the doorway I can already smell the scent of old books, a perfume of crumbling pages and time-worn leather. The other antiques stores that I've passed on this cobblestoned alley have their air conditioners running and their doors closed against the heat, but this shop's door is propped open, as if inviting me to enter. It's my last afternoon in Rome, my last chance to pick up a souvenir of my visit. Already I've bought a silk tie for Rob and Lily, but I haven't found anything for myself. In the window of this antiques shop, I see exactly what I want. 
 Teaser:
"Beware the ignorant, Lorenzo. They're the most dangerous enemy of all, because they are everywhere."
I have just gotten the book from the library and am looking forward to reading it, having read a few of her other books.

Tess Gerritsen's first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in hardcover in 1996, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her suspense novels since then have been: Life Support (1997), Bloodstream (1998), Gravity (1999), The Surgeon (2001), The Apprentice (2002), The Sinner (2003), Body Double (2004), Vanish (2005), The Mephisto Club (2006), and The Bone Garden (2007). (goodreads) 

I guess her space thriller, Gravity, was published before the movie with a similar plot was made. Here's a description from goodreads of her 2004 book: An experiment on micro-organisms conducted in space goes wrong. The cells begin to infect the crew with deadly results. Emma Watson struggles to contain the deadly microbe while her husband and NASA try to retrieve her from space, before it's too late. Sounds thrilling.

What are you reading this week, and would you read Playing with Fire based on the beginning and teaser? 

Sep 9, 2011

Book Review: The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen


Title: The Silent Girl: a Rizzo and Isles Novel
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books; First Edition (July 5, 2011)
Source: Library book
Rating: 4.75/5

"Why would an immigrant on a cook's salary buy a Glock?"
"For protection maybe? Because he felt threatened?"
"You're the psychologist, Dr. Zucker. Don't you have an answer?" ( ch. 9)


Comments: I found The Silent Girl, my first Tess Gerritsen book, after scrolling through blogs and reading positive reviews of this suspense writer. The plot is complex and involves several families in and outside of Boston's Chinatown. I liked the pairing of detective Rizzoli with forensic pathologist, Maura Isles, in the series and using Chinese mythology and Chinese martial arts or wushu in the plot.

Publisher's description: In the murky shadows of an alley lies a female’s severed hand. On the tenement rooftop above is the corpse belonging to that hand, a red-haired woman dressed all in black, her head nearly severed. Two strands of silver hair—not human—cling to her body. They are Rizzoli’s only clues, but they’re enough for her and medical examiner Maura Isles to make the startling discovery: that this...had a chilling prequel.

Nineteen years earlier, a murder-suicide in a Chinatown restaurant left five people dead. But one woman connected to that massacre is still alive: a mysterious martial arts master who knows a secret she dares not tell, a secret....that may not even be human. Now she’s the target of someone, or something, deeply and relentlessly evil. Cracking a crime resonating with echoes of an ancient Chinese legend, Rizzoli and Isles must outwit an unseen enemy with...a swift, avenging blade.

About the author: Tess Gerritsen, a physician and author of several books of suspense, lives in Maine. She is the New York Times best selling author of Ice Cold.

Sunday Salon: Letting Go of September by Sandra J. Jackson

  Books reviewed Letting Go of September by Sandra J. Jackson, July 31, 2024; BooksGoSocial Genre: thriller , family drama Themes: reflectiv...