|
|
|
The Surgeon
Tess Gerritsen
The DoNot Press £6.99 |
 |
Reviewed by Heather O'Donoghue |
 |
Tess Gerritsen's The
Surgeon has all the right ingredients for a full-on horror
crime novel. The Surgeon of the title is the nickname given by
the Boston Police Department to an unknown serial woman killer
because of the evident anatomical and surgical skills he
demonstrates on his victims. I'll spare you the horrible
details, but Tess Gerritsen doesn't. The central horror is a
familiar one from this kind of literature: the Surgeon
immobilises his prey, and then keeps each woman alive for hours
and hours before finally despatching her. The narrative is
interspersed by his musings on human sacrifice through human
history - the Greeks, the Aztecs, the vikings - and the way he
contextualizes himself within this long tradition is seriously
disturbing.
The twist is a variation on a familiar
theme: the apparrent resurrection of a dead killer. A trawl
through police databases reveals that these latest vile killings
have been carried out in precisely the same way as an earlier
series outside Boston, but there is no question of the same man
being responsible, because Andrew Capra, a surgery intern in
Savannah, Georgia, was shot dead by his last victim, Dr.
Catherine Cordell, before he managed to kill her. And yet there
clearly is a link, because Cordell has moved to Boston, and it
soon becomes evident that the Surgeon is offering up his victims
to Catherine Cordell herself.
Cordell is a heroine who lets Gerritsen
have it both ways: she's both a feminist icon, tough,
independent, beautiful and professional, and an archetypal
victim, traumatized by her previous encounter with Capra, and
terrified by this new reflux of violent sadism apparently
produced for her benefit. The men in the novel fall over
themselves to defend her, to the wry resentment of Officer Jane
Rizzoli, the only woman in Homicide, who has long realised that
the only way to be regarded as the equal of the men around her
is to be a lot better at her job than they are. The tensions and
rivalries within the police department are well drawn, and the
dialogue is snappy but also thoughtful and sympathetic. The
scenes in Cordell's hospital are also very gripping, with lots
of authentic-sounding medical jargon. All in all, The
Surgeon is a highly accomplished thriller: everything you'd
hope to find is there, but without either cliché or
predictability.
 |
|
|