Reaper at Large....... (The Bone Garden - Tess Gerritsen)

Member Name: Charris2002

Product:	The Bone Garden - Tess Gerritsen
Date:	25/11/08 (219 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's an okay read

Disadvantages: It's trying to be too clever

Tess Gerritsen is a doctor, an anthropologist, and now an extremely successful novelist. She has, to date, specialised in crime and forensic fiction in the present day.

This novel marks a change from her previous style, with no real lead character and a historical setting. Whether or not she has successfully made this transition, I'm not sure at all.

I think the first thing to establish is that the novel is set both in the present (by the discovery of long forgotten letters and documents from the 1830s) and in the 1830s (as we see the events described in the documents unfold).

In the present day, Julia Hammill uncovers the remains of a young woman whilst clearing the garden of her recently purchased run-down house. Following her recent divorce, Julia is trying to put her life back together and the last thing she needed is a body in the garden....However, it proves to be well over 100 years old and, therefore, is of no interest to the police. She receives a call from a surviving relative of the previous owner of the house telling her of some interesting facts that have come to light whilst he has been going through his late relatives documents.........

Meanwhile, back in the 1830s, we meet a group of surgeons, some well-known, others merely students from a range of different backgrounds....Our two main characters here in the 1830s are the famous Oliver Wendell Holmes (real life poet, writer and physician), the other Norris Marshall (a fictional farmers son who has dragged himself through to medical school from nothing.....). They are joined by Rose Connolly, desperately keeping her late sisters newborn baby safe and well and away from the orphanage. She is not helped in this aim by the evil father of the child Ebbett Tate, the drunken victorian villian (complete with twirly moustache I expect) who wants to sell the baby. Suddenly, those known to these three are being murdered, and it soon becomes apparent that it's the same killer - the West End Reaper....as he leaves his own macabre calling card...by mutilating the bodies (not entirely dissimilar to our very own East End Ripper, better known as Jack!)

Norris, hard-up and needing the cash, links up with the wall-eyed Jack Burke (yep, Jack Burke! as in Burke and Hare) the resurrectionist, to steal newly interred bodies for medical research......

Norris teams up with Rose to protect the newborn but falls under suspicion of being the West End Reaper.............his mentor defends and supports Norris' innocence.......he falls under suspicion again.......meanwhile, dark forces are closing in around Rose and the baby....another murder occurs...

BY this point I had grave doubts about this book - I really can't work out if the author is being lazy here by drawing upon historical evidence from Britain in the 1830s or trying, in her strange way, to pay homage to some of the darkest days in medical history and British crime........

I don't want to spoil any more of the book for you but, be warned, their are some fairly graphic descriptions and some convoluted plot twists before story ends......

Available new at £6.99 RRP, but try your supermarkets first!!

Summary: A strange blend of fact, fiction and speculation