The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen

This is a book that I probably would've never picked up on my own but, Amazon offered it briefly as a free download so, I decided to check it out. It is a fairly standard serial killer thriller but, don't let that dissuade you from reading it. "The Surgeon" is gripping suspense and Gerritsen is a gifted story teller.

The story centers around a serial killer in Boston who performs living dissections on his female victims. At times, the story is extremely grizzly but the juxtaposition of descriptions of the Surgeon's exploits with those of a female surgeon, who is the focus of the killer's wrath, give the novel a context that is often missing in suspense fiction.

It is unfair to compare the writing in a mystery or thriller to that of a more "literary" genre, however, it is Tess Gerritsen's writing which propels this story. The believability and vulnerability of her characters pulls the reader in and the sections of the book told from the perspective of the killer border on tortured genius. "The Surgeon" had me clicking through the pages as fast as I could read them and at the end of the day, that is the job of a successful suspense novel.