Vanish by Tess Gerritsen - Review

Tess Gerritsen's novel, Vanish, is part of the Rizzoli and Isles series and is a New York Times Bestseller! This thriller begins with a group of Eastern European girls smuggled into the USA to serve as sex slaves. In a change of scene, there is quite a surprise for Maura Isles, the Boston medical examiner, when she goes to the morgue to check something and sees another corpse moving! When she unzips the body bag, the beautiful Jane Doe opens her eyes! Maura calls 911 to have Jane Doe rushed to the hospital across from the morgue and goes to check on her there. What a shock this must have been for Maura!

Jane Doe is frantic as staff members try to immobilize her arms. She manages to pull the security guard's gun and shoot him, then proceeds to take six hostages. As her luck would have it, pregnant homicide detective Jane Rizzoli is in the wrong place at the wrong time. She is at the same hospital to deliver her overdue baby and becomes one of Jane Doe's hostages.

As time ticks by, Rizzoli's husband Gabriel Dean works together with Maura Isles to find out who the killer is. But they cannot solve the mystery without the key that Rizzoli learns from Jane Doe during the hostage crisis. As this story unfolds, readers will be mesmerized by the unexpected ending!

Vanish grabbed me immediately when I started reading it and I did not want to put it down until I was finished! For me, this is one of the factors that makes for a great thriller. I have always loved the Rizzoli and Isles characters. Tess Gerritsen has done a great job in developing these characters and their involvement is this case. Rizzoli has become not only the detective, but the pregnant hostage overdue to deliver her baby.

The story line is tense and appropriate for the current political environment in the USA. It is packed with action, twists and turns that keep the reader guessing who the killer is and whether the hostages and hostage takers will live to see another day.

According to her website, Tess Gerritsen is set to release "Die Again" on December 30th, 2014. I cannot wait to get a copy to read!