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Summary
Summary
In her most masterful novel of medical suspense,New York Timesbestselling author Tess Gerritsen creates a villain of unforgettable evil--and the one woman who can catch him before he kills again. He slips into their homes at night and walks silently into bedrooms where women lie sleeping, unaware of the horrors they soon will endure. The precision of the killer's methods suggests he is a deranged man of medicine, propelling the Boston newspapers and the frightened public to name him "The Surgeon." The cops' only clue rests with another surgeon, the victim of a nearly identical crime. Two years ago, Dr. Catherine Cordell fought back and killed her attacker before he could complete his assault. Now she hides her fears of intimacy behind a cool and elegant exterior and a well-earned reputation as a top trauma surgeon. Cordell's careful facade is about to crack as this new killer recreates, with chilling accuracy, the details of Cordell's own ordeal. With every new murder he seems to be taunting her, cutting ever closer, from her hospital to her home. Her only comfort comes from Thomas Moore, the detective assigned to the case. But even Moore cannot protect Cordell from a brilliant hunter who somehow understands--and savors--the secret fears of every woman he kills. Filled with the authentic detail that is the trademark of this doctor turned author . . . and peopled with rich and complex characters--from the ER to the squad room to the city morgue--here is a thriller of unprecedented depth and suspense. Exposing the shocking link between those who kill and cure, punish and protect,The Surgeonis Tess Gerritsen's most exciting accomplishment yet.
Author Notes
Tess Gerritsen was born on June 12, 1953 in San Diego, California. She received a bachelor's degree from Stanford University and a M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco. While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction. Her first novel, Call After Midnight was published in 1987. It was followed by eight more romantic suspense novels. She also wrote the screenplay, Adrift, which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson.
Her first medical thriller, Harvest, was published in 1996. She is the author of the Rizzoli and Isles series, which was adapted into a television show. She has won several awards including the Nero Wolfe Award for Vanish and the Rita Award for The Surgeon. She retired from the medical field and writes full-time. Her other novels include Presumed Guilty, Harvest, Gravity, The Bone Garden, and Playing with Fire.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A creepy cerebral serial killer vaguely reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter pursues a charismatic female doctor in this thoroughly satisfying if somewhat derivative thriller. Skillfully drawn surgical backdrops sizzling with ER intensity balance out the obligatory romantic intrigue and familiar plucky police professionals, attesting to Gerritsen's authentic medical expertise as a former physician. Dr. Catherine Cordell, the main character in this chilling tale, thought she had shot and killed her rapist and would-be murderer two years earlier in steamy Savannah, where he was a surgery intern at her hospital. Now, in Boston, as another hot summer begins, he appears to have miraculously returned and embarked once again on his grisly mission: he rapes women, then surgically removes their wombs. As two intrepid detectives Thomas Moore and Jane Rizzoli investigate, Cordell begins to doubt her own memories (or lack of) and discovers that not even her OR is safe. Gliding as smoothly as a scalpel in a confident surgeon's hand, this tale proves that Gerritsen (Harvest; Life Support; Bloodstream; Gravity), originally a romance writer, has morphed into a dependable suspense novelist whose growing popularity is keeping pace with her ever-finer writing skills. (Sept.) Forecast: National print advertising in People, the New York Times and USA Today, plus a major promotion campaign, will ratchet Gerritsen's sales up yet another notch. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Top-grade thriller-diller from Gerritsen (the jaw-chattering Gravity, 1999, etc.), a former internist who gave up the stethoscope to raise kids and chills. Blistering ER trauma-work spells the main melodrama: a gruesome serial killer who collects his victims' wombs has over the years become quite skilled with his blade. The really awful part: he removes the womb while the naked woman lies awake and can see his power over her. ER trauma surgeon Catherine Cordell first met the killer, called "The Surgeon" by Boston newspapers, down in Savannah, where she was his last victim. Luckily for Catherine, after being raped she got a hand free from the cord binding her to the bed, cut herself loose with a scalpel, reached under her bed, grabbed a pistol, and seemingly killed Andrew Capra, the inept medical student about to pluck out her womb. Unable to bear Savannah, where everyone seemed to know she'd been raped, Catherine transferred to Boston, holed up for nearly two years, then took a job as a trauma surgeon without disclosing her past. Good grief! more wombless bodies start showing up in Boston. Did she really kill Andrew? Well, yes. Homicide detective Thomas Moore, a widower soon romancing sexually zapped Catherine, determines that she is on the killer's list. Jealous, plainfaced, snappish young Jane Rizzoli, the only female on Boston Homicide, leads his investigation. Gerritsen goes to great pains working up a classical background for the killer, filling us in on Greek, Viking, and Aztec sacrificial practices while also getting strong pages out of scenes in a rape crisis center, where incidents vividly illustrate the lifelong black aftermath of a rape. Then The Surgeon leaves one victim alive as an ER birthday present for Catherine, so that she can sew up spilled bowels while working through her own rape trauma. Sharp characters stitch your eye to the page. An all-nighter.
Booklist Review
After an almost brutal confrontation with trauma surgeon Catherine Cordell, detective Jane Rizzoli, the only woman in the Boston Police's homicide unit, observes that "there's cool, and then there's ice." Before moving to Boston, Cordell was raped in her Savannah, Georgia, home and would have had her uterus cut out if she hadn't freed herself and shot her assailant before he completed his surgical procedures. Later in Boston, three other women weren't as plucky. Since Andrew Capra, the surgeon who almost killed Cordell, was himself killed, who is playing "surgeon" in Boston, and why? The answers to those questions come out bit by bit. In the process, detective Tom Moore and Cordell fall in love, and the head of the homicide unit sends him off to Savannah, ostensibly to investigate the Capra murder scene but in reality to get him away from Cordell. While perusing Capra's class picture in an Emory Medical School yearbook, Moore finds the key to both the "surgeon" and his motivation. Back in Boston, Rizzoli mistakenly kills an unarmed assailant, gets dismissed to the Boston equivalent of Coventry, but ultimately saves Cordell from the "surgeon," though she almost loses her own life. Gerritsen fans know by now what to expect from her: a fascinating story with a gripping plot and believably human characters. Such is The Surgeon, and, in places, then some. Let new readers learn what the fans delight in. --William Beatty
Library Journal Review
Physician-turned-author Gerritsen returns with her fourth medical thriller (after Gravity), which has all of the usual components: the serial killer who targets women in Boston (dubbed The Surgeon because he removes their wombs before slitting their throats); the attractive, gutsy survivor (surgeon Catherine Cordell) who manages to kill her attacker; the principled, sympathetic detective (Thomas Moore); and the female cop trying to prove herself (the somewhat strident Jane Rizzoli). The kicker? Dr. Cordell survived and killed her attacker in Savannah two years agoso who is killing women in Boston today, and who is now stalking and threatening Catherine? Will she be able to escape the killer's gruesome knife a second time? Gerritsen's novels are briskly plotted thrillers filled with realistic medical detail, and this latest is no exception. While the characters here are somewhat wooden and stereotypical and the action predictable, it will find a place on leisure reading lists, perhaps along with something by Alex Kava. Recommended for public library fiction collections.Rebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Calumet Lib., Hammond, IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.