Rizzoli & Isles by Tess Gerritsen

                                                                  
               Detective Jane Rizzoli                                               Dr. Maura Isles              

                         
If you’re in for a great read – especially on these dreary autumn nights – I can certainly recommend the Rizzoli & Isles novels by Tess Gerritsen.

Up to now, there are 10 titles in this series: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold The Silent Girl  and Last To Die.

It is not only the thrilling plot which keeps these novels page-turners. Each of them has a plot which will keep you glued to your seat because you want to find out how it all went. But interesting is also the evolution of the two main characters, Detective Jane Rizzoli and Medical Examiner Maura Isles.

In the first novel, Jane Rizzoli is quite a tough cookie, trying to prove a woman can do a man’s job better. She is the only daughter in a family of Italian immigrants. Her two brothers are lazy and want to be served, which her mother does without complaining. Jane is somewhat envious of Maura, who has nice looks (something Jane hasn’t, according to her own thoughts) and is always in command.
But in the course of the novels, you see how Maura grows envious of Jane, who finally meets a man who loves her (FIB agent Gabriel Dean) and has a happy marriage, blessed with a baby daughter, Regina.

Maura has moved from sunny California to the East Coast and has to get used to Boston. She lives in a pretty home, but doesn’t have a boyfriend. In The Sinner her ex-husband returns and their romance flares into live once more, but soon she fears her ex could be a murderer. Also here she meets Father Daniel Brophy, and falls in love with him.

Jane tells her this love is doomed, but she refuses to listen. And that while there is another man, Anthony Sansone (appears first in The Mephisto Club), who adores her and would suit her much better… At last, in Ice Cold, Maura ends the relationship with Daniel.

Jane and Maura’s parents prove interesting as well. After 35 years of marriage, Jane’s dad Frank cheats on his wife and she leaves him. She goes to live with Jane and  Gabriel but finds a place of her own and starts dating pensioned cop Vince Korsak.

Maura’s parents turn up in Body Double, when a female corpse lands on her examination table. The woman resembles her and in the course of the novel Maura finds out this was her sister. Maura was adopted, so she knows nothing of her past. Proves her mother and father are a pair of mass murderers….

Tess Gerritsen has also other novels, but I like her Rizzoli & Isles novels best.