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thecatandthefox 's review for:
The Surgeon
by Tess Gerritsen
This is a hard book to review; I wanted to give it 3 Stars but its effect made me bump it up to 4. I started it on Saturday and finished it on Sunday; when I went to bed on Saturday it stayed with me and gave me vivid, horrible dreams. Most books don't have that effect.
Before going into my review, this isn't the Rizzoli & Isles of TNT's show (which I love); if anything this is what R&I would be on FX or HBO. It's gritty and dark and what a true "crime thriller" is meant to be. Overall, the narrative isn't wonderful. It is a good thriller and a page-turner. I needed to know what happened next. And, in the end, I wasn't disappointed with the story.
However, there are a lot of issues I had this with book. First, as some of the other people mentioned, Rizzoli isn't a sympathetic character. I found her brash and annoying. She has a chip on her shoulder that the male detectives don't respect her, but throughout the book I didn't see her act in anyway to warrant respect. She ignored protocol, she went off on her own and kept leads because she wanted the credit, and she lashed out at her partner multiple times. She was a miserable person. One point Rizzoli is home with her family and her brother is in town and she thinks about how they don't respect her, but they respect him. She thinks something along the lines of as a Marine he only played at war, while as a police officer she was living it. This is insulting to soldiers and to police offers -- this shouldn't be a reflection of our police force.
It also felt at times as though Gerritsen was writing about an outdated attitude towards females in the police force; which is insulting as a woman reading. I found everyone's attitudes frustrating.
The POV was confusing. I still don't know if this was meant to be a book based on Rizzoli or her partner Moore. It seemed to flip midway through the book. We follow Moore to Savannah, where we learn a key piece of evidence, and suddenly when he returns the rest of the book exclusively follows Rizzoli. Gerritsen also flips at the end of each chapter and shows us the villain's thoughts -- but never explains why or what this is. Is it just random musings? It gives us insight into the criminal but it felt out of place. Unless we knew more.
The writing is also a bit too much. The medical and technical explanations were well done, if a bit much at time. There was a tendency to be repetitive and to tell the reader something, then show it. I'd say with that there was at least a quarter of the book that could have been cut off.
Will I read the next one? Eventually. I'm curious to see the introduction of Dr. Isles, but I'm not rushing out to read it and will probably allow a few books before I read that.