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"tremendous police procedural romance"
Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted July 13, 2003

It's only four days before Christmas and the citizens of Boston are in an uproar because two nuns in a cloistered abbey are bludgeoned with one dead and the other barely alive. Boston Medical Examiner Dr. Maura Isles discovers that Sister Camille gave birth to a stillborn deformed son. Read more...

"A spine-tingling mystery"
Reviewed by Rashmi Srinivas
Posted September 11, 2003

This gritty novel begins on an icy cold New England morning, with the police investigating the brutal attack on a couple of nuns inside a chapel, which left one young nun dead and an older one critically injured. Detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles are both shaken to Read more...

"Horrific Tale of Murder"
Reviewed by Marilyn Heyman
Posted September 14, 2003

Medical examiner, Maura Isles, is called to the convent of Our Lady of Divine Light where novice, Sister Camille, has been bludgeoned to death and an older nun, Sister Ursula, beaten but still holding on. The other fourteen elderly nuns silently watch as Maura and police homicide officer, Jane Read more...

Summary

Not even the icy temperatures of a typical New England winter can match the bone-chilling scene of carnage discovered in the early morning hours at the chapel of Our Lady of Divine Light. Within the sanctuary walls of the cloistered convent, now stained with blood, lie two nuns- one dead, one critically injured- victims of an unspeakable savage attacker.

The brutal crime appears to be without motive, and the elderly nuns in residence can offer little help in the police investigation. But medical examiner Maura Isles's autopsy of the dead woman yields a shocking surprise: Twenty-four-year-old Sister Camille, the order's sole novice, gave birth before she was murdered. Then the disturbing case takes another stunning new turn when another woman is found murdered in an abandoned building, her body mutilated beyond recognition. Together, Isles and homicide detective Jane Rizzoli uncover an ancient horror that connects these terrible slaughters. As long-buried secrets come to light, Maura Isles finds herself drawn inexorably toward the heart of an investigation that strikes closer and closer to home - and toward a dawning revelation about the killer's identity too shattering to consider.

As spine-tingling as it is mind-jolting, The Sinner showcases Tess Gerritsen in peak form - bringing her intimate knowledge of the dark depths of criminal investigation brilliantly to bear. Beneath the layers of startling insight into the souls of its characters, and the richly wrought depiction of the everyday war between good and evil, beats the unstoppable heart of an irresistible thriller.