The bone garden : a novel

Format:

Book (large print)

Title:

The bone garden : a novel

Author:

Gerritsen, Tess.

ISBN:

9780739327135

9780345497604

Edition:

1st large print ed.

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

544 pages (large print) ; 24 cm

Summary:

Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil--human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder. Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, medical student Norris Marshall has joined the ranks of local "resurrectionists"--Those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. But when a distinguished doctor is found murdered and mutilated on university grounds, Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect.

Subject(s):

Medical examiners (Law) -- Fiction.

Forensic pathologists -- Fiction.

Large type books.

Skeleton -- Fiction.

Boston (Mass.) -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Boston (Mass.) -- Fiction.

Massachusetts -- Boston.

Genre:

Large type books.

Detective and mystery fiction.

Fiction.

Mystery fiction.

Detective and mystery stories.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... McMinnville Public Library	Gerritsen, T.	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Dallas Public Library	LARGE PRINT - GERRITSEN	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil-human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder.
Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, medical student Norris Marshall has joined the ranks of local resurrectionists-those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. But when a distinguished doctor is found murdered and mutilated on university grounds, Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect.
With unflagging suspense and pitch-perfect period detail, THE BONE GARDEN deftly traces the dark mystery at its heart across time and place to a finale as ingeniously conceived as it is shocking. From the Compact Disc edition.

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 (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

At the start of this disappointing stand-alone thriller from bestseller Gerritsen (The Mephisto Club), 38-year-old divorcee Julia Hamill discovers a skeleton buried in the garden of the Boston house she's just moved into; the ring found with the remains was in fashion in the 1830s, the fractured bones suggest murder. Flashback to 1830: medical student Norris Marshall, an outcast among his wealthier classmates, meets Rose Connolly in a Boston maternity ward, where Rose's sister recently died of childbirth fever. When several gutted bodies turn up in deserted alleyways, Rose and Norris are the only ones to catch a glimpse of the killer, dubbed the West End Reaper. Norris, Rose and Norris's fellow student, Oliver Wendell Holmes, race to uncover the truth behind the slayings, which will remind many of Jack the Ripper's crimes. In the present, Julia is able to trace their progress with the help of a relative of the house's former owner. Unfortunately, neither the present nor the historical story line maintains the suspense necessary for a whodunit spanning several generations. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus Review

An old mystery is crossed with a modern story in the latest from Gerritsen (The Mephisto Club, 2006, etc.). Julia Hamill, newly divorced and still smarting, purchases an old house outside Boston. Determined to dig a garden, she instead finds the bones of a long-dead woman--the apparent victim of murder--which starts her on a journey to ferret out the story behind her death. Julia connects with Henry, a no-nonsense 89-year-old with boxes of documents that once belonged to the now-deceased previous owner of Julia's home. The two discover a mystery dating back to the 1830s. At the heart of it is a baby named Meggie, born to the beautiful but doomed Irish chambermaid, Aurnia. Married to a man who cares nothing for her, Aurnia lays dying in a maternity ward with her sister, Rose, at her side. Rose, a spirited 17-year-old, takes Meggie to protect her from Aurnia's husband, but soon finds herself the target of a bizarre manhunt. Someone is after the child--and Rose, as well, because she witnessed a horrifying murder. The body count piles up as Rose struggles to remain free of those who would take Meggie from her. Meanwhile, a young medical student becomes the chief suspect of the West End Reaper killings when he stumbles onto another terrible homicide. Although he fights the prospect, eventually he and Rose join forces to solve the murders and protect the baby at the heart of the mysterious deaths. Readers with delicate stomachs may find Gerritsen's graphic descriptions of corpse dissection hard to take, but the story, which digs up a dark Boston of times long past, entices readers to keep turning pages long after their bedtimes. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Medical examiner Maura Isles returns in another thriller that joins past and present. In the present, in the backyard of Julia Hamill's old Boston house, a long-buried body is unearthed. In 1830, long before the invention of the term serial killer, medical student Norris Marshall is accused of being a mass murderer. To dig himself out from under suspicion, Norris seeks help from a fellow student, one Oliver Wendell Holmes. Together they pursue the cold-hearted killer, while, in the present day, Julia Hamill tries to find out the identity of the body buried in her backyard. As her fans well know, this is not Gerritsen's first shot at combining the modern and the historical. Yet it reads as though it might be: it's clunky, with overly familiar plotting and an attempt at 1830s-era dialogue that's often painful to the ear. Incorporating real people into historical fiction is a well-worn device, and while the author succeeds in bringing Holmes vividly to life, she doesn't really do anything particularly special with him a fictional character would have served the story just as well. This is a passable thriller Gerritsen does generate a fair amount of suspense but it fails to come together on any level beyond plot. Recommendable, finally, only because the author's many fans will want to read it.--Pitt, David Copyright 2007 Booklist