The Mystery Starts Here

I just finished reading, “The Keeper,” by Tess Gerritsen and I’m still reeling. I COULD NOT put this book down! How rare is that? Very. I start soooo many books because they sound soooo good on the blurb, only to be disappointed. Most don’t pass my 50 page rule. “The Keeper” was that rare exception - a book I read from cover to cover, almost without stopping. I found myself devouring pages so fast that I had to slow myself down because I was missing vital information. Okay, enough hyperbole.

“The Keeper” takes us from our ordinary world into that of archaeology, Egyptology and mummies and a lot of other neat stuff. It starts when an old mummy is found in the basement of an obscure private museum in Boston. The museum staff has sent out wrapping to make sure this mummy is old, and gotten confirmation, so the next step is to take it in for a CT scan to see what’s inside. They aren’t even sure it’s a woman. Dr. Maura Isles is in the building and watches the fascinating procedure but…sees that the mummy has a bullet lodged in her leg. This old gal isn’t as old as everyone thought.

Boston PD detectives, Jane Rizzoli and Barry Frost are called in to investigate. More mummies and worse, are found. Rizzoli and Frost follow the clues, some leading back decades and finally solve the case. The ending blew me away! I love when that happens too. I read so many mysteries and can almost always figure out whodunit - not so here.

Gerritsen has obviously done her homework. I know I’ll be going on the Internet to follow some of the digs she mentioned int the book. So, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of “The Keeper.” I promise you’ll have the time of your life! Then come back here and share you thoughts with us!

Just finished reading “Devil May Ride,” Wendy Robert’s second book in the Ghost Dusters Mystery series. It was a fun quick read, but number two was much darker than the first book, “The Remains of the Dead.”

In this installment, Sophie, Zack and Jackie are helping out another crime scene business by cleaning up meth labs. Seattle is steaming in a heat wave and when Sophie takes a break from cleaning a lab to go outside, she hears a baby crying. She finds a newborn baby stuffed inside the body of a goat, and encounters his dead ghost-mother, covered in blood. Did I say this book was grim? It gets worse.

Sophie becomes involved with bikers, witches, missing money, protecting her hugely pregnant sister and oh yes, a few more ghosts. For some reason, Sophie annoyed me in this book because she was so … prickly. I was never sure why all the attitude and was, quite frankly surprised that she had any friends at all AND that Zack still lusted after her. She verged on being a ….itch and I don’t mean witch.

We finally find out why Brian, Sophie’s brother, killed himself but I didn’t buy the explanation. Several times I think the timeline was off – one minute is was the dead of night, the next sunlight was streaming and the pavement was streaming. May just be me – I confess I read very fast.

I will certainly read the next book in the series, out in December of 2009 and HOPE it’s more like the first one, light and funny. I trust Sophie will be a nicer person now that she’s living with Zack.