Vanish Is a Satisfying Addition to Tess Gerritsen's Rizzoli & Isles Series

Photo Courtesy of Gerritsen's Site

Rizzoli & Isles seems to be around for good -- at least for another year, anyway. Star Angie Harmon, who plays hardened homicide detective Jane Rizzoli on the TNT show, announced the nominations for and winners of the Screen Actors Guild awards last night. Earlier last week, I saw co-star Lorraine Bracco on an episode of The View. She reported that the series had been picked up for  15-episode second season. The series is based on the mystery/crime series by Tess Gerritsen which includes Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles. Although the television show doesn't follow specific books in terms of cases, the back story and characters are definitely pulled directly from the book series.

Vanish is the fifth novel in the Rizzoli/Isles series by Gerritsen. In the novel, Jane Rizzoli is largely pregnant, and supposed to be off duty until after the baby is born. When she enters the hospital for delivery, the kind of thing that could only happen to her occurs: the hospital is put on lockdown after a patient kills a guard and takes hostages in a wing of the hospital. One of her hostages? You guessed it -- Jane. Outside the hospital, Maura Isles is being swamped with press after a morgue patient awakens. Once she realizes her friend Jane is trapped inside the hospital, Maura joins forces with Jane's husband (and FBI agent) Gabriel Dean.

The action surrounding regular-series characters is enough for the novel to be entertaining for followers of the series, but Gerritsen takes the plot a step further by including the background for the mystery concerning the hostage-taker. She opens up a Law & Order: SVU-esque story about girls brought from overseas to serve as slaves for the American prostitution trade. What unfolds is both a satisfying addition to the series, but also a novel that first-time Gerritsen readers can enjoy.

Gerritsen is also a writer of medical thriller novels, as well as romantic suspense books. Watch Rizzoli & Isles when it returns to TNT this summer.

If you are interested in purchasing Vanish or other Gerritsen titles, using the link below will provide a few pennies of profit for this blog:

• Vanish on Amazon.com