Body Double

Body Double, the fourth installment in Tess Gerritsen’s murder mystery series, Rizzoli & Isles, was disappointing to say the least.

Going in, I had high hopes for it. In fact, it sounded downright intriguing. Unfortunately, it became clear pretty quickly that I was in for a huge letdown.

At first it begins with a presumed murder, though unannounced that it is, in fact, a prologue, and dissappointingly it is quite obvious from page one that this girl, Alice Rose, will fall victim to Elijah Lank’s sadistic mind.

Also right off the bat, of course, is Maura Isles being surrounded by death–this time in the Catacombs, in France. It becomes apparent that she feels incredibly intrigued by the dead. At various points in the novel, it makes it clear that she feels calm and at home with the dead–that she actually seems to enjoy cutting into the bodies in her morgue, that she feels calm when their blood is washing over her hands. She has a disturbing, scary interest in the dead, and quite frankly, this is not the first time I’ve been frustrated by this and thought she needed immediate and intensive psychiatric care. But I digress.

Dr. Isles returns home to find the Boston police there, a massive crime scene right outside her apartment. As it always seems she is, she begins fawning and lusting over Father Brophy. Everyone begins to stare at her and immediately she assumes it’s because she is Boston’s “Queen of the Dead,” and Detective Jane Rizzoli, now eight months pregnant, takes her aside to speak with her.

A woman who looks just like Dr. Isles had been murdered, outside Maura Isle’s apartment. Naturally, they have to ask her some questions–where she was, why this woman was outside her home, who was she. All the normal questions in a homicide investigation. And, Dr. Isles being the egotistical, overly-guarded, rude-toned woman she is, gets angry and her answers become short, as she drinks an alcoholic beverage prepared by Father Brophy.

Throughout the novel, her attitude becomes almost hostile towards Rizzoli, who is simply doing her job, and the comments made both aloud and inwardly about the detective, are rather frustrating bits of ignorance. Furthermore, she then begins to obsess over a police detective, Rick Ballard, going as far as to later ignore Jane Rizzoli’s kind offer of staying with her for the night, as her husband is out of town, while they ensure her own home is safe to return to, and takes up Detective Ballard’s offer of staying at his home, because his daughter’s bedroom is currently unoccupied.

The blatant disregard of safety precautions by Dr. Isles is almost disturbing, and the level of frustration she shows to the police is flabbergasting as they do their job trying to learn who killed the woman in the car, and is now targeting Dr. Isles herself.

The woman in the car, Anna Leoni, was a woman running from an abusive boyfriend, with the help of Detective Ballard, and, as assumed, she is Dr. Isles’ twin sister.

Maura Isles learns that her biological mother is a mass murderer, and simply refuses to accept that the woman is, in fact, responsible, claiming she’s simply a “burnt out schizo” now plagued with the lasting effects of medications she never should have been prescribed. In fact, the only way to get through Dr. Isles’ evidently, incredibly thick skull, is to show her not only the crime scene photos but the autopsy reports as well, which sadly goes into immense and disturbing detail. More murders are uncovered, when Dr. Isles runs off to Maine, digging up human remains with disturbing excitement, wearing her dead twin’s clothes, and these murders, too, come with a shocking amount of detail.

Meanwhile, a pregnant woman named Matilda Purvis is kidnapped, and while I admire her strength and determination throughout these chapters, I must admit that this subplot, too, was a letdown, and quite frankly the nauseating details of her abductor’s death were not only disturbing, but the entirety of this abductor’s presence in the novel is not only underplayed, but almost nonexistent, totaling no more than several pages of dialogue or mention whatsoever.

In conclusion, this book was an absolute waste of five dollars, three days worth of time, and a small part of my sanity, along with quite a bit of patience. In fact, this novel was so bad, that I wouldn’t recommend it to even my worst enemy, should I have one. And, aside from that, if I couldn’t sell it to a secondhand bookshop for a few dollars, I’d give myself the satisfaction of simply burning this horrendous piece of ‘literature.’ This novel only has, from me, a rating of one of ten stars, and the fair warning that you not waste your time.