Jean's Reviews > Body Double

Body Double: The title of Tess Gerritsen’s fourth Rizzoli & Isles thriller is what it implies. Dr. Maura Isles returns home from Paris feeling jetlagged and irritated after a medical conference. Her flight was delayed. Her baggage was lost. Now she encounters a confusing, unthinkable scene as the taxi approaches her home. She can’t even get to her door, as the yellow police tape and squad cars block her entrance. Maura is not the only one who is shocked and bewildered. Everyone who sees her does a double take. Why? Because the victim of the shooting in front of her home looks exactly like her.

As a medical examiner, Dr. Isles instinctively wants answers. Because of the circumstances, however, she must recuse herself from this case. That doesn’t mean she won’t seek the truth on her own. She’s not entirely on her own. The police are involved – Detective Jane Rizzoli lends a hand, even though it is not her jurisdiction. Most of the information comes from a detective in the Newton Police Department, Rick Ballard. He knew the victim and agrees to do whatever he can to assist Maura.

My first thoughts about this book were that it is a little bit far-fetched. I can’t even write much about it without spoilers. Eventually, I decided to just see where the story would take me. When the remains of more victims started turning up, I wondered where this would end up. Could these cases possibly be related? Then we got snippets of a live victim – was this person still alive, or was this the author’s way of showing us how the killer operated? The killer – insane or simply evil?

There was even less of Detective Rizzoli in this one than there was in The Sinner, and that was a bit disappointing. Having seen all that Maura went through with her ex-husband in that book, I felt guarded, even protective, about her relationships this time around. I don’t find Maura as unlikable as many readers do, apparently. I didn’t quite trust Ballard, even though he is a cop. Despite the almost tabloid bizarreness of the plot, I found this book hard to put down. There is quite a twist at the end that I did not see coming. Overall, it didn’t quite hit the mark as well as the previous book, but I still found it to be suspenseful, albeit creepy at times; therefore, I will definitely continue with the series.