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KEEPING THE DEAD
by Tess Gerritsen
Bantam, February 2009
349 pages
17.99 GBP
ISBN: 0593057791


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Tess Gerritsen always strikes me as a "One, two, and away" sort of author. In this novel, the reader doesn't even have the benefit of the one and the two since the opening words grab you: "He is coming for me." The tension escalates from there. Chapter One is narrated in the first person by a woman, Medea, who went to Cairo as a happy college student but returned as a victim, albeit one who is simply awaiting the jaws of destiny to snap around her. What is even worse, she is attempting to prevent her young daughter from falling victim to the nameless something that is waiting to catch her. Like so many children, however, she discounts the very real fears of her parent and therefore makes it much easier for the worst to happen. Thus Medea keeps watch over Nefertari, the daughter she wishes to protect, despite that daughter's unbounded confidence and optimism, but knows that Tari herself contains the seeds of their joint downfall.

Dr Maura Isles is a medical examiner and, unusually, is in the audience for the live CT examination of a corpse which is not, for once, part of her job, a mummy that had been languishing for years in the cellar of the Crispin Museum. The carbon dating of the wrappings indicate that the mummy was preserved in the Ptolemaic period. As the examination proceeds, however, something strange appears - although the mummy appears consistent with funerary practices of its period, she appears to have undergone modern dental work and suffered a bullet wound in the leg. Perhaps Maura will need to use her modern skills on behalf of a person who met her death a lot more recently than at first appeared.

As is customary with Gerritsen's novels, the suspense is sustained throughout the novel. I have never found Gerritsen's instruction of the reader to be boringly didactic and this book certainly doesn't prove an exception to the rule. Thus, the reader is able to increase his knowledge of the Egyptian method of preserving bodies after death, with little or no difficulty.

The characterisation is as strong as ever, with a continuation of the story of Maura's personal life and her illicit affair with a man who, apparently, will never be able to claim her publicly.

But the focus is on the young archaeologist Dr Josephine Pulcillo and Gerritsen manages to build an enthralling tale from the embalmed body of Madam X and its ties to Josephine and the dark secrets of her past. As always with Gerritsen, there is a good, strong mystery as well as the promise of a continuation of Maura's story in future books.

This novel appeared in the US under the title THE KEEPSAKE.

Reviewed by Denise Pickles, November 2008

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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