50books_poc | Tess Gerritsen

I just finished 'Harvest' by Tess Gerritsen, and wanted to write a quick review, but rapidly realized that I couldn't quite bear to do that without trying to plug her Jane Rizzoli novels as well, so this is a bit of a two part entry.

First of all, Harvest. It's a stand alone novel, and not part of a series as far as I'm aware. The story starts when Dr Abby di Matteo, working in a hospital, makes a choice to divert a donor heart from a wealthy woman to a dying teenager. This triggers a series of events which are probably not the most unexpected (Abby faces threats to her career and life, uncovers unsavoury organ donation practices in her hospital) and it all turns into a medical thriller about the black market in organ donation.

Realistically, there aren't many great plot twists and I wasn't surprised by much, but I did really really enjoy it. The book is well written, I like Abby a lot as a character, and Tess Gerritsen worked as a doctor before becoming a writer, so the medical backdrop to the story is really precise and well detailed.

However, I didn't feel it was one of Tess Gerritsen's better books. I believe it's her first novel, and it shows - it's good, but compared to her later books, not nearly as good as it could be. I reserve much more praise for her Rizzoli/Isles series, which are fantastic and I've been reading for a while. I love Jane Rizzoli, the lead character in these, mostly because she's so gloriously unpretty - she's short, and a bit stocky, and is a wonderfully flawed person. She's the most fantastic antidote to the stereotypical Glamour Girl In Law Enforcement which I sometimes feel Patricia Cornwall and Kathy Reich tend to fall into when writing their heroines.

I think Tess Gerritsen has a historical thriller out as well - The Bone Garden - which I need to get my grubby little mitts on. I'm really hoping it's good, for a combination of historical novel/thriller/hard science in one book is quite close to my dream combo for comfortable evening reading...