THE SURGEON

Tess Gerritsen left a very successful career as an internist to raise her children and devote more time to writing. After several books that have had moderate success, Gerritsen has now written a gruesome and frightening story that should put her among the top women thriller writers working today.It is the middle of a hot sultry summer in downtown Boston, and Detective Thomas Moore of the city's Homicide Unit is called back from holiday to be told there's a serial killer at large. And this isn't just any serial killer. This is a killer who targets single women, breaks into their apartments in the early hours of the morning, and operates on his victims before killing them. This killer is a surgeon; a surgeon whom, it is soon established, works alongside unsuspecting doctors and nurses in the Pilgrim Medical Center, a surgeon whom, instead of saving lives, takes them in bizarre and terrifying acts of ritualistic torture. As soon as Moore and his sidekick, Rizzoli, the only woman detective in the Homicide Unit, begin their investigation, they make a startling discovery. Most closely involved is Catherine Cordell, a beautiful medic with a mysterious past. Five years previously, she had been the subject of a horrifying rape and attempted murder, but had shot her aggressor dead. Now she is being targeted by someone who seems to know all about her past, her work at the Pilgrim Medical Center, what car she drives and, crucially, where she lives. Once again, it seems, the man she believes she killed is on her case, and this time he knows exactly how to get her...In The Surgeon, Tess Gerritsen has written a high octane, page-turning novel as gripping as it is terrifying. From the opening page, when the surgeon is waiting outside his latest victim's apartment for the police to arrive, to the cataclysmic finale, the writing is slick and assured, the tension unrelenting. Written by a woman for women, this is psychological suspense at its very best.