The Keepsake, also known as Keeping the Dead, is the seventh book in the Rizzoli & Isles murder mystery series by author Tess Gerritsen.
Unfortunately, I must admit that this book was a disappointment given the expectations set by previous novels in the series. The first half was excruciatingly boring, and as a result I cannot recall most, if any, key points of it.
The first few pages, a sort of prologue, were tolerable–almost good, even–and set up a pliable sense of fear and a presumably brutal murder in the dark of night. Tragically, the next six chapters were full of redundant small talk, slow-paced backstories, and some pretty intelligent people displaying some dim-witted tendencies. Even the most important characters, such as Jane Rizzoli, lead detective in BPD’s homicide divison, was rather flat, and simply put, displayed the exact same sentiments and insecurities as she did in novel one (The Surgeon), with little to no development. That right there is a red flag already, along with Maura Isle’s useless infatuation with an older man who has no relevancy to the plot whatsoever.
When the first body was discovered, it was mummified, leading scientists to believe it was from Ancient Egypt, when instead if from approximately twenty years prior to the current date.
Sounds like it should get interesting now, right? Wrong, this was still part of the poorly written section of the book, and actually failed to gain any sort of interest from me–firstly because it was, quite frankly, predictable given the ridiculous and overly dramatized sense of seriousness and talk of not even knowing where the mummy came from; but, also, because there were a number of hints to this fact during a mere three pages, where every historian and scientist in the room simply made excuses and blamed the machine.
My thought process during these sorry pages, followed somewhere along these lines: “No, sorry, you simply didn’t discover an ancient mummy. Go back to school to actually learn about real mummies and, quite possibly, the machines you were blaming, and/or re-examine your life choices.” But I digress.
Next comes the search of the museum–after all, this mummy was found there, it was a recent murder, what else might be down there in that dank basement full of ancient artifacts? After busting down a wall, shrunken heads are found. You read that right, shrunken heads. Like the one in Harry Potter, only from Ancient Egypt and with ritual markings? They’re surely not more victims. . .
Shortly after this brief scare, thankfully, the book takes a turn. Suspects are finally brought in, clues are uncovered, history is dug up. But again, this is around page one hundred fifty, and a waste of approximately four hours of my time. Time is one thing you can’t get back, people, so use it wisely–clearly, I didn’t.
I’ll leave the good parts a mere mystery, should you actually give this book a shot, but the next two hundred or so pages were actually rather intriguing, and while there were certainly a few disturbing elements, it truly did grasp my attention for the last half of the novel.
If murder mysteries and Egyptology are in your alley, you may actually enjoy this book; that said, these are both somewhere in my alley, and I only enjoyed it enough to rate this novel three stars. Sorry, but your time is most likely better spent re-reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, a book where the shrunken head actually had a lasting impression, and characters were already more evolved that the book prior.
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