Click here to read reviewer Dave Roy's take on The Mephisto Club.
Blending medical suspense with police procedurals, Tess Gerritsen has made a name for herself in the thriller field with action-packed books like Harvest, Body Double and Vanish. In The Mephisto Club, Gerritsen’s latest thriller, she brings back her two popular characters, Detective Jane Rizzoli and Boston medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles. When the book opens, Jane is dealing with the life changes that have come from having a new baby and Maura is struggling to fight the feelings she is having for a Catholic priest. Their personal lives are put on the back burner, however, when they are called to the scene of a brutal murder. A young woman is dead, and scrawled in blood at the scene are the words I HAVE SINNED.
Clues soon lead them to a group of scholars who call themselves The Mephisto Club and claim their sole purpose to be seeking out and proving to the rest of the world that evil does indeed exist in this world. As the two women become more familiar with the club, they begin to suspect that either the club has become a target of their mysterious killer or that the killer may be a member of the club itself.
Like all of Gerritsen’s previous novels, The Mephisto Club is a fast-paced thriller that quickly sucks you in and keeps you turning the pages. Gerritsen does an excellent job of not only keeping the tension at a high level; she also succeeds in not sacrificing character development in favor of plot. Both Jane and Maura (and other periphery characters) become more fleshed out and real in each subsequent book they appear in. Because of this reason, readers will probably benefit most from starting at the beginning of Gerritsen’s series when the characters are introduced. However, The Mephisto Club does succeed as a stand-alone thriller for those who want to jump in without first reading the other books.
Tess Gerritsen is definitely one of the most talented authors working in the medical thriller field. Her books are well-plotted, full of action and feature some of the best characters in the genre. The Mephisto Club is another fine addition to her list of accomplishments.