Gerritsen, Tess: The Apprentice

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Tess Gerritsen's The Apprentice picks up where The Surgeon left off: a new serial killer is stalking the Boston area, and he seems to have taken some pointers from Warren Hoyt, "The Surgeon," who's been in prison since Homicide Detective Jane Rizzoli ended his killing spree a year earlier. But whereas Hoyt liked to torture and kill lone, vulnerable women, Boston's new menace likes an audience: he targets couples, "performing" for the husband before slitting his throat and then abucting the woman. Still, there are troubling similarities between his and Warren Hoyt's crimes, even if Rizzoli is almost alone at first in recognizing those parallels for what they are.

The Apprentice is another very strong novel from Gerritsen. In this second outing in the series, the hardened Rizzoli is humanized a bit, and two important characters are introduced: Maura Isles, the medical examiner, and FBI agent Gabriel Dean. The latter's unexplained involvement in her investigations and his icy demeanor initially trouble Rizzoli, but their relationship slowly shifts in the course of the book--part of Rizzoli's defrosting. I'm happy to be reading Gerritsen's novels, finally, from the beginning, having jumped around among them previously. While it's not essential to read them in order--the author does a good job of making new readers feel comfortable in the series--it is nice having a better handle on the characters' back stories. Soon, on to book three.