Bone chilling historical mystery (The Bone Garden - Tess Gerritsen)

Member Name: burtybookworm

Product:	The Bone Garden - Tess Gerritsen
Date:	11/05/09 (92 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good characters, interesting historical content, different

Disadvantages: slow in some sections, the future characters could have been developed more.

Julia Hamill is digging in her new garden in Boston when she comes across the skeleton of a woman who seems to have been murdered and dumped over 100 years previously.
Curious as to the past of her new home, Julia is contacted by the previous owners cousin who has letters dating back to the 1880's which might give clues as to the identity of the mystery woman buried in her garden.

Its in the 1830's that we find ourselves for most of the book, looking in at the life of a young medical student called Norris Marshall, a farmers boy who has to obtain payment for his course through gruesome means - by becoming a "resurrectionist" - digging up fresh graves for bodies for the medical institutions to learn and discover further information about the human anatomy.
At the same time, a young woman by the name of Rose has had to take charge of her newly born niece as her sister dies from childbed fever. Norris and Rose are drawn together by the gruesome murders that have occurred by someone dubbed the West End Reaper who is killing the people that they have been in contact with. The evidence against both of them is damning as they both struggle to survive and clear their names.

Will they discover whom the West End Reaper is before it strikes again? Will Julia discover the identity of the skeleton in her garden?

I selected this book from a readitswapit list, it isn't usually my type of book, but the other swapper wanted an old book of my dads and this seemed like a change from the usual! To be honest, I was expecting a crime thriller/mystery but what I actually got from this book was completely different. After looking at some other reviews, it seems some others were surprised also.

Firstly, I found something odd. The book description mentions a woman called Dr Maura Isles who is called in to "investigate" the bones of the woman in the garden. By the back of the book, I had the impression that this woman has featured a lot in Tess Gerritsen's books and I assumed she would be the main character in this one. Although she does appear in the beginning of the book, she has such a fleeting presence that I wonder why she is mentioned at all! I have never read a Gerritsen book before so I wasn't really disillusioned, but I can imagine if you are expecting a returning character this might be a bit disappointing.

In fact, the story mainly takes place in the 1830's with small chapters back in the present to remind the reader that we are finding out all these details about the past from the letters that were written from someone called O.W.H to a woman called Margaret. The scene is set perfectly for us to anticipate some juicy secret, as right at the beginning, we get to read the first letter in which O.W.H hints at a secret past that has been left buried but he wants to now share with Margaret about her parents - if she wants to know.

This did get me gripped from the outset but for different reasons than I first thought. Once I realised that most of the action would take place in the 1830's, I wasn't at all sure I would see it through to the end, but I found that I was intrigued by the life of Rose and her sister Aurnia's life. Instead of a thriller, it firstly became an interesting look at the history of childbed fever and the way in which it was dealt with as well as looking at the medical profession in a historical context. I assume that most of what has been put in the story regarding practises when dealing with corpses and dealing with pregnant women is accurate - Tess Gerritsen, the author herself is a doctor and anthropologist, so this in itself was fascinating. Later, when the murders occurred, it became an exciting mystery that was to be unravelled.

As for the characters themselves, these were well portrayed. Norris's background and personality are explored well enough for the reader to engage with him, and Roses' courageousness at just 17 is inspiring. Other characters of interest were those of the professors that taught Norris who offered a colourful and upper class alternative to Norris and Rose, and also O.W.H himself who was a surprising character that I warmed to throughout the book.
The characters who we see in the present didn't hold a lot of interest for me, I liked Julia, but she wasn't present enough in the story for me to care really what happened to her in her own life. (The reader does learn of the issues in her life and this is followed through at the end of the book, but I found it was really secondary and almost pointless after reading about Norris and Rose.)

My criticism would be that there were times when I felt that the story was dragging, and in fact a lot of the action doesn't really happen until way into the second half of the book. This wasn't too much of an issue, but I was just aware that I was half way through the book but actually in fairness not much had really happened. Despite this, the tension that Gerritsen creates makes it a worthwhile read and the story is only enriched by the medical history that she has added to it.

Although I would in no way call this a classic thriller (in fact, its not a thriller at all really), I felt that the element of mystery that the author created was superb and the suspense was well drawn out. Her writing style is enjoyable, easy and a pleasure to read and I was engrossed in the life of the 1830's in Boston for most of the book. I was also pleasantly surprised that I hadn't guessed all the mysteries by the end of the book - as well as forgetting that the whole point of the story was to find the identity of the 100-year-old murdered woman! It was nicely tied up and I thought it successfully achieved the title of "historical mystery" rather than thriller. A very enjoyable - and different - read.

Summary: An interesting historical mystery.