The Keepsake by Tess Gerritsen
Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles Investigate the Archaeology Killer
Nov 23, 2008
The Keepsake is Gerritsen's seventh novel featuring medical examiner Maura Isles and homicide detective Jane Rizzoli. The novel starts out with excitement over a new mummy owned by the Crispin Museum. The mummy is taken in for a CT scan to look inside it without disturbing the centuries old wrappings. When a bullet is found lodged in the mummy's leg, everyone involved is shocked. The alleged ancient Egyptian mummy now appears to be a body that was murdered within the last few decades.
Shrunken Heads and Bog Bodies
When no one at the museum can trace where the mummy came from, the police discover some shrunken heads, or tsantsas, in the basement of the museum. One of them appears to be more recent than the others. When archaeologist Dr. Josephine Pulcillo seems spooked by the newspaper stuffing pulled from the tsantsa, Rizzoli and her partner, Frost, start to suspect that Pulcillo might be involved with these bodies.
Pulcillo's background in Egyptology and archaeology seems similar to the ways in which the bodies were prepared. Pulcillo finds another preserved body in the trunk of her car, this time it is a bog body. Bog bodies are corpses that are eerily preserved by being submerged in a bog. The correct conditions and lack of oxygen in bogs allow bodies to remain underwater for centuries without decomposing. Now Dr.Pulcillo seems a target for some sort of madman, nicknamed the Archaeology Killer.
Personal Lives
Fans of Gerritsen's novels will be happy to see the progression of Dr. Isles' relationship with Father Daniel Brophy. A Catholic priest, Brophy is unattainable by Isles, although she seems to have fallen completely in love with him. The reader also wonders if Isles will start a relationship with Anthony Sansone, a character from The Mephisto Club. Sansone pays much attention to Isles, and is more of a realistic match for her, but she doesn't have romantic feelings for him.
As for Rizzoli, she is still happily married to Gabriel Dean and raising their daughter, Regina. However, Jane's mother and father are not happily married, and her mother is dating Vincent Korsak, another returning character from previous Gerritsen novels. Jane struggles with her feelings about her mother dating a past colleague, and also with the potential dissolution of her partner's marriage as well.
Scientific Suspense
Gerritsen's background as a physician come in handy as she describes all the different ways in which the bodies are preserved in The Keepsake. Readers will be left wondering if these bog bodies and shrunken heads exist. They do, and they serve to make The Keepsake that much more creepy and realistic. Gerritsen has written another chilling thriller that might just make the reader interested to read about these body preservation methods after they finish the novel.
The Keepsake was published by Ballantine Books on September 9, 2008. The ISBN-10 of the hardcover is 0345497627 and the ISBN-13 is 978-0345497628.
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