"tremendous police procedural romance"

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. The other nun that was attacked, Sister Ursula was only back in the abbey a year after doing nursing work at a leper colony in India. She remains in intensive care but the doctors aren't hopeful that she will recover.

Maura is called out on another case when a woman is shot to death, her hands and feet are amputated, and her facial skin peeled away. The woman also has some strange lesions on her body and after exhaustive study, they learn she was suffering from Hansen's Disease. A vice president of a company that has a factory near the leper's colony is found shot to death, the victim of an assassin just before he was scheduled to talk to the Justice Department. All three of these cases are linked and once that connection is discovered, the police will probably know who the killer is.

Tess Gerritsen has joined the ranks of Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs with this fantastic and shocking medical thriller. Jane Rizzoli, one of the more popular Boston detectives, plays a secondary role in THE SINNER because she is as concerned about her unexpected pregnancy as she is about these cases. Dr. Maura Isles is the star of this tale because it is her esoteric medical knowledge that is needed if the case is to be solved.

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted July 13, 2003

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.