Body Double, by Tess Gerritsen

A(nother) female forensic pathologist comes home to find policemen attending a murder scene in her street. The dead woman in the car looks just like her, and further investigation reveals that she shared the same birthday and blood-type - what's going on: who is she, why was she there and why was she killed?

I ordered this because another of Gerritsen's books had been reviewed in the paper. My heart sank a little when I saw who the reader was: I thought I was in for another feisty wisecracking female, after the experiences of Point of Origin and Guardian Angel. But it turned out to be better than those books, the heroine wasn't that irritating and the story was well structured.

Like Easy Prey, this story has a series of murders, and it turns out that more than one killer is at work. But unlike that book, which I think was confident enough not to be constrained by a standard structure, this one was definitely planned and plotted, with revelations well spaced in a way that meant you felt you were making progress toward the final answer. So a different type of book, one where you know where you stand.

I think it was fairly gripping, and it was a nice way to set up the story: it felt like the author had been given the initial situation and told "get out of that then", and made a convincing go at explaining away the seemingly bizarre circumstances at the start of the book.

So, worth trying another one. In fact from the synopsis I've read I think her other books might be have a similar closed-room-mystery type structure..

Completed : 09-Mar-2006 (audiobook, read by Lorelei King)

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