I have enjoyed Tess Gerritsen’s current series, The Martini Club, about retired CIA agents trying to escape their pasts in Maine, so decided to go hear her speak recently at a local library. A former physician, she is best known for her medical thrillers – her books have sold more than 40 million copies worldwide – including the Rizzoli & Isles books that became a hit TV show.
I was curious why she had left her traditional publisher for Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint but understood (reluctantly) when she said their offer came with the promise of a TV series. One of the librarians told me that because of the Amazon connection the library’s usual bookstore refused to come sell copies (who can blame them). I thought Tess’s response was classy – she didn’t disappoint the library by canceling; instead, she brought a box of her books to share with the audience, asking only that they make a donation to the Friends Group.
She drew a sizable crowd, most of whom had been reading her books for years. She talked a little about living in Maine and how there really are retired CIA agents in her home town, which inspired her most recent books (a third will be published in 2026). She also described how she introduced Jane Rizzoli, a prickly police detective, a secondary character pursuing a serial killer, who is disliked and mistreated by her male colleagues in The Surgeon. Tess explained that she didn’t try to make Rizzoli likable because she planned to kill her off. Then she couldn’t bring herself to do it and Rizzoli became an important character subsequently.
This made me curious to read The Surgeon. The heroine is an ER doctor, who seems calm and collected, but moved to Boston to rebuild her life after she was attacked and nearly murdered by a fellow doctor in Atlanta. Catherine Cordell managed to shoot and kill her attacker, who was responsible for four deaths. She is still traumatized by her experience. Now there is a similar killer targeting innocent women and the media has nicknamed him “the Surgeon” because of the way he (ugh) carves up his victims. Some of the police are afraid he might be after Catherine, while others wonder if she is actually the killer. The police in this book are unprofessional and (most of them) obnoxious.
I’ve read my share of serial killer suspense fiction (more or less pleasurably, depending on the author) and have learned (1) not to listen to them on audio CDs because you cannot skip the graphic bits, and (2) books like this one that provide the killer’s ruminations are too creepy for me (this is different from a detective trying to understand a killer's motivation). Also, this book dwelled too much on the single women being terrorized by the serial killer – maybe the author was trying to keep me awake at night. However, because I was more interested in the evolution of Rizzoli’s character, I persevered past the unprofessional cops and gruesome murders. I might read another but I definitely prefer The Spy Coast and The Summer Guests, which are completely different, and suspect you will too.
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