Book review: The Killing Place

The Killing Place. Tess Gerritsen. American crime fiction.

I remember once driving through the southern part of Idaho. The radio in my rental car could pick up just four stations. One was country music, the other three were all operated by Christian religious outfits. Of the kind we would know as fundamentalist.

That's middle America. A place of hot gospel and cold winters. Where a man with charisma can set himself up as God's latest, and local, prophet. It is a facility that can produce sublime experience ... or subjection, terror, and even death.

So when forensic pathologist Dr Maura Isles finds herself stranded in the snowdrifted township of Kingdom Come in Wyoming, after a car accident, it soon becomes clear that she and the other survivors of the event are in mortal danger. What isn't clear is where the danger is coming from.

Tess Gerritsen writes gripping and clever crime stories which expose the underside of the American dream. As skilfully as Dr Isles might slice out the clues to how and why a body on her autopsy table found its sternum under her investigative saw.

Maura Isles is one of her regulars. As is Dr Isles's friend, cop Jane Rizzoli. She enters the narrative at a late stage, and out of jurisdiction. And only in time to bring her colleague's remains back to Boston for a funeral.

There are many twists in 'The Killing Place'. As a compulsive reader of crime fiction, and as a writer, I can usually spot the direction and sometimes the ending of a story well in advance of its conclusion. At least three times in this one, the author caught me out.

It is a good yarn well told. It is also disturbing for anyone who might worry about religious cults. The United States is a nation which cherishes its Christian ethos to the point that every President will finish his public talks to the country with 'God Bless America'. But there are those who exploit this fundamental religious ethic for their own ends. In 'The Killing Place' we are reminded of Jim Jones in Guyana, and Waco in Texas. The township of Kingdom Come might well be another of these.

Or maybe Tess Gerritsen has another twist under her computer keyboard? Maybe, maybe not.

I fought sleep to finish it.

Brian Byrne.