Listen to me A novel

Review by Booklist Review

Has it really been five years since the last Rizzoli and Isles novel? Fans who have been eagerly awaiting a new installment in the ever-popular series can breathe easy: this one is worth the wait. A woman has been murdered. At first, detective Jane Rizzoli and forensic pathologist Maura Isles are stumped. Who would kill a respected and widely liked nurse? Soon they discover the victim might not be entirely whom she seemed to be, and the investigation gets really hot, really quickly. Meanwhile, Rizzoli's mother, Angela, has some concerns about her new neighbors, but with her daughter otherwise occupied, Angela might have to investigate these newcomers all by herself. Gerritsen juggles both storylines adroitly, leaving one at a tantalizing moment to move on to the other. Result: all-night reading sessions to get the book finished. The interplay between the two lead characters is as entertaining as always, and the writing feels effortless. A fine entry in this popular series.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The latest Rizzoli and Isles novel in the long-running series will draw fans back with gusto.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The case of Sofia Suarez, a widowed nurse found bludgeoned to death in her home, drives bestseller Gerritsen's engrossing 13th mystery featuring Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles (after 2017's I Know a Secret). The inoffensive Sofia appears to have had a blameless past, but why was she, as Jane and Maura discover, making surreptitious calls to burner phones in the days before her death? Following leads painstakingly gathered from police reports and interviews with people who knew Sofia, Jane eventually links her murder to a cold case several states away. Meanwhile, Jane's mother, Angela, is worried about changes she sees in the neighborhood in which Jane grew up. Angela can't understand why the parents of a missing teenage girl seem so unconcerned or why the new couple across the street never seem to leave the house. The tension rises as Angela's vigilance leads her to draw false conclusions and puts her in personal danger. Gerritsen smoothly shifts between her complex plotlines as the action builds to a surprising conclusion. Newcomers will find this entry easily accessible. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (July)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The snoop is the star as Rizzoli and Isles make their 13th appearance together. A hit-and-run driver injures young Amy Antrim in downtown Boston, and Sofia Suarez, a middle-aged critical care nurse, is bludgeoned to death. Amy's father, a doctor, had worked with Sofia, but otherwise the two events appear unconnected. Boston PD Homicide detectives Jane Rizzoli and her partner, Barry Frost, investigate the murder, and medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles dissects poor Sofia's corpse for clues. And a teenage girl goes missing for the fourth time. Will she return on her own, or has something horrible happened to her? As Jane tries to work, she's pestered by her mom, Angela, the neighborhood snoop. Angela knows everybody's business and is friends with most of her neighbors. Her mantra is, "if you see something, say something," and she sees a new couple that has moved in close by, pulled the shades down, even installed bars on the windows. She wants her daughter to investigate, but Jane is busy dealing with real crime. Yet something fishy is going on over there, perhaps a woman being held captive and abused. The characters are certainly colorful. Isles escapes her daily view of death by playing piano and doing it to perfection. A colleague is surprised that she "chose cadavers over Chopin." Jane is miffed that her good friend Maura had never mentioned her musical pastime, but music "was her safe space, where death did not intrude." Meanwhile, a self-proclaimed former SEAL pumps iron in his front window, the better to impress the women. Angela gossips with her Scrabble friends and mildly resents the snotty wordsmith who has a master's in English. For her part, Angela has "a life degree in motherhood." She knows that the way to get men to help her is to offer them zucchini bread, and she knows how to tactfully fend off a neighbor's unwelcome advances. Gerritsen combines her knowledge of medicine and police procedure with an intricate plot, clever twists, and strong women. Solid entertainment by one of the best. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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One Amy I should have worn my boots, she thought as she stepped out of Snell Library and saw the fresh layer of sleet and slush covering the campus. When she'd left for school that morning it had been a balmy forty-­nine degrees, one in a string of springlike days that made her believe winter was finally over, and she had come to campus wearing blue jeans and a hoodie and brand-­new pink flats made of buttery leather. But while she'd been inside all day working on her laptop, outside, winter had come roaring back. Now it was dark, and with this frigid wind sweeping across the courtyard, the pavement would soon be as slick as an ice rink. With a sigh, she zipped up her hoodie and hauled her backpack, heavy with books and her laptop, onto her shoulders. There's no way around it. Here we go. Gingerly she descended the library stairs and landed ankle-­deep in slush. Her feet now wet and stinging, she forged ahead down the path between Haydn Hall and Blackman Auditorium. Well, these new shoes were ruined. Stupid, stupid. That's what she got for not checking the forecast this morning. For forgetting that March in Boston could break a girl's heart. She reached Eli Hall and suddenly stopped. Turned. Were those footsteps she'd heard behind her? For a moment she stared at the alley that cut between the two buildings but all she saw was the deserted walkway, glistening beneath the lamplight. Darkness and bad weather had emptied out the campus and she heard no footsteps now, just the rattle of falling sleet and the distant whish of cars traveling down Huntington Avenue. She hugged her hoodie tighter and kept walking. The campus quadrangle was slick and gleaming with a crust of ice and her sadly inadequate shoes crunched through the rime into puddles, splashing her jeans with ice water. She could no longer feel her toes. This was all Prof. Harthoorn's fault. He was the reason she'd spent all day in the library, the reason she wasn't at home right now, eating dinner with her parents. But here she was, toes numb with impending frostbite, all because her senior thesis--­the thirty-­two-­page paper she'd been working on for months--­was incomplete, he'd said. Inadequate, he'd said, because she hadn't addressed the pivotal event in Artemisia Gentileschi's life, the life-­changing trauma that imbued her paintings with such violent and visceral power: being raped. As if women were formless lumps of clay, needing to be pummeled and abused to be shaped into something greater. As if what Artemisia needed to become an artist was a good old-­fashioned sexual assault. She felt more and more angry about Harthoorn's comments as she walked across the quad, splashing through slush. What did a dried-­up old man like him know about women and all the wearying and infuriating annoyances they had to tolerate? All the helpful advice foisted on them by men with their I know better voices. She reached the crosswalk and stopped at the pedestrian light, which had just turned red. Of course it was red; nothing today had gone her way. Cars rolled past, tires spraying up water. Sleet clattered on her backpack, and she thought about her laptop and whether it was getting wet and she'd lose all the work she'd put in this afternoon. Yes, that would perfectly cap off her day. It's what she deserved for not checking the forecast. For not bringing an umbrella. For wearing these stupid shoes. The light was still red. Was it broken? Should she ignore it and just make a dash across the street? She was so focused on the light that she wasn't aware of the man standing behind her. Then something about him caught her attention. Perhaps it was the rustle of his nylon jacket, or the odor of alcohol drifting on his breath. All at once she knew someone was there and she turned to look at him. He was so bundled up against the cold, with a scarf wrapped up to his chin and a wool cap pulled down to his eyebrows, that all she could really see of his face were his eyes. He didn't avoid her gaze but looked straight back at her with a stare so piercing that she felt violated, as if that stare was vacuuming out her deepest secrets. He made no move toward her but his gaze was enough to make her uneasy. She glanced across Huntington Avenue, at the businesses across the street. The taco shop was open, its windows brightly lit, and she could see half a dozen customers inside. A safe place, with people to turn to if she needed help. She could duck in there to get warm, and maybe call an Uber to take her home. The light turned green at last. She stepped too quickly off the curb and the sole of her leather flat instantly skidded across the ice-­slicked road. Arms flywheeling, she fought to stay upright but the backpack threw her off-balance and down she went, her rump splashing down into slush. Soaked and shaken, she staggered back to her feet. She never saw the headlights hurtling toward her. Excerpted from Rizzoli and Isles: Listen to Me: A Novel by Tess Gerritsen All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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