Vanish

Tess Gerritsen

Average Rating 8/10 (2 Reviews)

Stare death in the face...

The beautiful woman appears to be just another corpse in the morgue. But when medical examiner Maura Isles looks down at the body, she gets the fright of her life.

The corpse opens its eyes.

Now very much alive, the woman is rushed to the hospital, where she murders a security guard and seizes hostages, one of whom is the heavily pregnant homicide detective Jane Rizzoli.

But who is this woman, and what does she want? Only Jane can solve the mystery - if she survives the night.

Review by Jessica (120507) Rating (8/10)
Review by Chrissi (190407) Rating (8/10)

Review by Jessica
Rating 8/10
Medical examiner Maura Isles has worked with many corpses in the cold and sinister autopsy room. Working long hours throughout the day, Maura is blissfully unaware of the next event that will haunt her nightmares forever.

Laid in a body bag inside the freezing refrigerator with blue lips and seemingly dead, a body of a beautiful young woman comes back to life. Shaken, Maura dials 911 and has the woman transported to hospital immediately. However it is not until later that Maura begins regretting her decision. This young woman is suddenly very alive and goes on to kill a security guard, and captures many people, holding them hostage.

One of these hostages just so happens to be pregnant homicide detective Jane Rizzoli, who struggles to keep calm under the threat of this crazy woman. The once thought to be dead woman, Jane Doe, also has a mysterious companion who helps her in this reign of terror.

Interwoven throughout the story line, is the horrendous and barbaric tale of sexual slavery and the poor women who have had to endure months of cruelty at the hands of heartless men who take pleasure in raping and assaulting them. Mila, a sex slave taken from her home in Belarus, is determined to escape her horrific new life but to risk escaping is to risk death or an even greater punishment. Who will save her from her awful fate? Surely there must be someone...

This is a realistic story with a twist that connects them both. Tess Gerritsen never fails to impress the reader with her rich knowledge of medical experience combined with her writing skills, producing an unstoppable novel that will hold the reader’s attention throughout. Abductions, murder, rape and mystery ensure a gripping and shocking read.
Jessica (12th May 2007)

Review by Chrissi
Rating 8/10
I read an article a while ago, in which a woman involved with sex workers kidnapped from their homes in the former Communist Bloc said that the worst import ever made was the film Pretty Woman, which made young women believe that there was a Prince Charming waiting for them in Western Countries. She said that they were leaving their homes, lured by the lies of traffickers in human misery. Tess Gerritsen explores the fates of some of these women in her book Vanish.

The women are transported to the States through Mexico and are kept as slaves in brothels where they are brutalised by wealthy men. The escape of two of these women comes when there is a massacre at the brothel and they flee, unable to rest and unable to seek help. When help does arrive it is in the unlikely form of a paranoid conspiracy theorist who is well known to the authorities.

When one of the women turns up, already pronounced dead but found to be breathing by Medical Examiner Maura Isles, events take a sinister turn when she kills a security guard and takes hostage people inside the hospital, including the Detective Jane Rizzoli, in labour with her first child. The interplay between Jane and the kidnapper, and then the kidnapper’s accomplice, as well as the media, is well written and tense, and the concern of Gabriel, Jane’s husband, trapped outside not knowing how Jane is doing, is palpable.

Tess Gerritsen does write the gory bits very well, and her description of the brothel scenes and the dreadful acts that take place there are extremely vivid and as a result can be quite stomach churning. It is one of those books that leaves a lasting impression on the reader and won’t be forgotten easily. In other words an excellent book that can only increase Tess Gerritsen’s fan base with its quality.
Chrissi (19th April 2007)