I’ve been told that you can give an artist the most hackneyed, the most overused, and the most simple idea and they can make something new of it that’s worth looking at. I don’t know that everyone can do that, but there are a select few that can.
Most writers are told there are only a handful of plots in the world. Literary professors seem convinced that every plot that has ever come out in American novels can be found within Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. I’m not going to disagree with that assessment, but I am going to doubt it a little.
One thing for certain, Tess Gerritsen’s fourth Boston Police Department Homicide Detective Jane Rizzoli novel at first appears to be a writer in search of a plot. Medical Examiner Maura Isles came to the forefront of the last novel, The Sinner, and she remains the focus of this one.
The idea of a “mysterious twin” or “dark twin” is one of the oldest plot tricks in the book. Mark Twain performed his magic on the plot device in The Prince and the Pauper. Before that Alexandre Dumas did it with The Man in the Iron Mask and Anthony Hope used it in The Prisoner of Zenda.
Just as these other masters of fiction pulled successful rabbits out of their hats, Gerritsen does the same with Dr. Maura Isles and her murdered twin. During the course of this novel, Jane Rizzoli is sidelined to degree while in her eighth month of pregnancy. Her relationship with FBI Special Agent Gabriel Dean continues to grow in this one, although they have problems back and forth.
Isles’s provocative relationship with Father Daniel Brophy (barely touched on in The Sinner) looms larger in the series as both Isles and Brophy have to fight against temptation and old feelings that haven’t gone away.
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