arianej's Full Review: Tess Gerritsen - The Bone Garden
The trouble with delving into a long-running series is usually that you have to start at the very beginning in order to get the most meaning out of what you read. Fortunately, this isn't the case here! Tess Gerritsen is the best-selling author of the Detective Jane Rizzoli/Dr. Maura Isles series, but you don't need to be familiar with it to enjoy her latest book, The Bone Garden.
This is a slightly different direction for Gerritsen, who is best known for her medical thrillers, but I don't think it will disappoint new readers. The Bone Garden is a compulsively readable historical novel with a bit of romance, a lot of gore and a tangled mystery.
The Story
The Bone Garden alternates between present day and 19th century Boston. Julia Hamill is trying to rebuild her life after an ugly divorce and she's already second-guessing her impulsive decision to buy an old house in rural Massachusetts. When her garden excavations turn up an old skeleton, Julia can't rest until she finds out the truth of what happened. With the help of her new neighbor Tom Page and his cranky Uncle Henry, they turn up a centuries-old mystery.
Rose Connolly is seventeen when her beloved sister dies of childbed fever, leaving behind a baby girl and a gold locket. Norris Marshall is a penniless medical student who spends his nights working as an unwilling "resurrectionist", plundering graves for corpses to sell on the black market. When one brutally mutilated body after another is discovered, Rose and Norris become the only two living witnesses to the figure the police dub the West End Reaper.
Rose's life and the life of her newborn niece are in danger, and Norris becomes the suspect for the murders. But there's more going on than a crazed serial killer roaming the Boston slums...
Strengths
Before she became a writer, Gerritsen was a doctor, and she's very well qualified to write a historical novel that's every bit as much about a key moment in the history of medicine as it is a mystery and a romance. That seems like a rather unlikely selling point for a thriller, but believe me, Gerritsen makes it work.
As more medical schools were established in the 19th century, the demand of cadavers for study skyrocketed to the point of creating a black market for dead bodies-- no questions asked. William Burke and William Hare were two infamous resurrectionists who turned from mere grave-robbing to murder, a practice which Gerritsen deftly borrows for her tale to excellent effect.
Equally effective was her use of poet, writer and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes as a minor character. Medicine in the early 1800s was a grisly business: sanitation and germ theory were unheard of and diseases were often carried from patient to patient by doctors and nurses who were unaware of the contagion they spread. Holmes was one of the few physicians calling attention to this issue with his essay on puerperal fever, a deadly illness that caused high mortality rates in childbirth.
Ironically, the most graphic parts of the novel aren't so much about the murder victims but about the practices common in hospitals of the time. The lack of sanitation that led to the rapid spread of infection and the unnecessary deaths of so many patients is not something anyone would want to dwell on, and this story drives that point home.
Gerritsen has clearly done her homework, but she doesn't beat you over the head by reciting dull facts. Instead, she works them into her story so that history and her own invention flows seamlessly together. I already knew about the Burke and Hare murders and a bit about the poor sanitation practices in early medicine, but her novel left me wanting to know more.
Weaknesses
The switching back and forth between present-day and 19th c. didn't bother me, but as it often happens, I found myself far more interested in the past than the present. We spend more time watching the story unfold from Rose and Norris' points of view, and let's face it-- evading both the police and the attentions of a serial killer named the West End Reaper is going to be more riveting than Julia poring through dusty boxes for historical papers, even though I looked forward to seeing the mystery of the skeleton solved.
Another problem is that the romance that develops between Rose and Norris and between Julia and her new neighbor Tom are both predictable and a bit lackluster. The growing affection between Julia and Tom is especially underdeveloped-- we only see glimpses of their characters and probably wouldn't buy a budding romance at all if the parallels to their historical counterparts weren't so obvious.
Part of the problem was that the focus shifted away from Julia a little too quickly in the beginning of the book. I certainly sympathized with her struggles to adjust to a new life, but the story moved away from her point of view before I could become more invested in her as a character. That goes double for Tom, who the readers barely see anything of at all. (Heck, his Uncle Henry actually gets more screentime and has more of a personality. I like him. In comparison, Tom is little more than a stranger.)
Given the author's beginnings as a romance writer, the whole lack of credible build-up and chemistry was a little surprising, but I chalk it up to the fact that romance isn't the focus of the novel.
Recommendations
There's a lot jumbled together in this book, almost too much for one novel of this length to hold. It's got murder, romance, history, secret societies, medicine and a touch of Jack the Ripper. Sometimes the fast pacing of the story made me regret that more time couldn't be spent on the little details, but in the end, I think it's for the best. You want to get to the bottom of the mysteries-- not only the identity of the West End Reaper but also the identity of the mystery skeleton in Julia's garden.
I haven't read much of Gerritsen's earlier work, so I can't say whether or not longtime fans would like this novel-- but I did. Historical mysteries are my cup of tea, particularly when they're well researched and well told. While I don't think it would bear up to multiple readings, I enjoyed it from start to finish as an engrossing read.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.