Tess Gerritsen’s new book The Killing Place is markedly different from her usual fare, but sports all her usual narrative acumen. The well-established page-turning abilities that marked out such earlier Gerritsen novels as The Mephisto Club and The Bone Garden are fully in evidence here, and the characters remain as sharply defined as ever – welcome news for followers of Gerritsen’s much-loved series heroines, forensic anthropologist Maura Isles and detective Jane Rizzoli.In Wyoming, the quaintly-named village of Kingdom Come is snowed in, and twelve identical houses are abandoned and in darkness. Cars, similarly, are abandoned. Where are all the human inhabitants? The snowstorm has marooned Maura Isles – and the private road that took her to the village has also led her into a frightening and disturbing puzzle. Subsequently, Jane Rizzoli arrives to find a car containing four bodies, all burnt to a crisp. Is one of the corpses Maura Isles? Rizzoli and Isles often find themselves investigating gruesome and baffling murder mysteries – very much the case here, but with Isles missing from the investigative team. As the tension is screwed ever tighter, it’s clear that, as ever, Tess Gerritsen has the full measure of the crime genre at her fingertips. Both her heroines – women who have to fight to remain at the top of their professions – are capable, but it’s Jane Rizzoli who is, in The Killing Place , stretched to her limits. --Barry Forshaw