The Killing Place - Tess Gerritsen

In Wyoming for a medical conference, Boston medical examiner Maura Isles joins a group of friends on a spur-of-the-moment ski trip. But when their SUV stalls on a snow-choked mountain road, they’re stranded with no help in sight.
As night falls, the group seeks refuge from the blizzard in the remote village of Kingdom Come, where twelve eerily identical houses stand dark and abandoned. Something terrible has happened in Kingdom Come: Meals sit untouched on tables, cars are still parked in garages. The town’s previous residents seem to have vanished into thin air, but footprints in the snow betray the presence of someone who still lurks in the cold darkness—someone who is watching Maura and her friends.
Days later, Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli receives the grim news that Maura’s charred body has been found in a mountain ravine. Shocked and grieving, Jane is determined to learn what happened to her friend. The investigation plunges Jane into the twisted history of Kingdom Come, where a gruesome discovery lies buried beneath the snow. As horrifying revelations come to light, Jane closes in on an enemy both powerful and merciless—and the chilling truth about Maura’s fate.

I know by now that Gerritsen novels are solid reads that I love the characters and the back story she includes. What I wasn't expecting was that after so many different victims, settings, causes of death she would manage to write a book that would keep me biting my nails for most of its first half.

From the synopsis above you can guess that something happens to Maura in Kingdom Come. From the way it is disclosed I thought that would happen in the first chapters and then we would be searching for clues with Rizzoli. But instead Gerritsen lets us stay with Maura for most of the time and we really feel the tension building regarding what has happened and what, we are sure, is about to happen.

Gerritsen writes a fascinating story, with quite a few twists along the way. The religious cult plot was intriguing and helped create the perfect suspicious atmosphere. Looking back now I find it a bit odd that she presented us with a bunch of secondary characters, made them real with very human qualities and flaws and then... just like that, they are out of the story. I was also a bit sorry that we are never told what really happened to the young girl of first chapter, we know where she ended but not how. And I am undecided whether the real motive would be big enough to warrant so many dead people but I certainly loved following Maura on her way through the wilderness.

I liked that Maura and Jane really seem to be friends in this book and that Maura and Brophy's relationship is sorted out. I like seeing Jane in her new roles as a mother and wife and considering what has been happening with her parents it's been great fun to see her as a daughter to. I also enjoyed the new friend that Maura finds and I can't wait to see if he will be in future books. This is definitely a book you won't want to put down till you reach the end. It is a compliment to Gerritsen's way of writing that only after I finished was I able to think about what I liked best or less. While I was reading I was completely immersed in the story!

Grade: 4.5/5