Medical fiction review 6/8/25- The Surgeon By Tess Gerritsen

The medical fiction book The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen.

This is another reread. I read it for the first time shortly after its publication in 2001.

I was deep in a murder mystery kick.

Here was an amazing, kick ass, take no shit heroine, Jane Rizzoli. She is on the hunt of a copy-cat serial killer in Boston.

This book series, 13 in all, that introduced Jane Rizzoli police detective to Maura Isles coroner.

They solve crimes together. And were the headliners in a cop and medicine show, a la CSI, NCIS, Crossing Jordan, and a slew of others. This aired from 2010-2016 and had seven seasons in total. I severely curtailed my television viewing in 2010 and I missed this one entirely.

But this is the book that spawned all of that.

I remember at the time that I enjoyed it. Nothing like a good mystery with high stakes and bodies all around. The serial killer this copycat was well copy-catting is a trauma surgeon (Dr. Catherine Cordell) in a Boston hospital who killed the original serial killer. Who happened to be a fellow surgical resident in Georgia.

It sounds more convoluted than it is.

Dr. Cordell is the pre-Isles, I guess. She is traumatized by surviving the original serial killer and had to have the mental fortitude to help find the copy-cat.

Jane is a good all around detective with a chip on her shoulder. She is the only girl in a rough and tumble Boston family. Her fellow detectives treated her poorly, beside her fellow detective Frost. One of them left a tampon in a bottle of water on her desk, hoping for a rise out of her. There is another detective who will be instrumental to the case. And to healing Dr. Cordell.

Misogyny aside this was a solid book.

I thought it would be a stand alone book. I was wrong. Maura Isles is introduced in the next book, The Apprentice. And she and Rizzoli unite against the haters.

Dr. Cordell is off having her happily ever after with Detective Moore.

I give this book a solid B. My first reading was an A. But points off for misogyny that the detectives display and the in poor taste practical jokes they pull on one of their own. It isn’t her fault that she is more observant than them and has a set of breasts. This was before the backlash to the “boys will be boys” pervasive attitude that we’ve been trying to kill for YEARS.

I still have The Surgeon and the second book The Apprentice on my bookshelves.