Murders lead to a chilling search for demons

These days, conspiracies gather behind every headline like storm clouds over the Pacific. Whether it’s the theory that there was government foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks or an alleged cover-up in Princess Diana’s death, so much suspicion clogs the media that it is increasingly difficult to read something fictional that will shake us. So it’s understandable if readers of mysteries and thrillers come to such novels a bit jaded, doubtful that a writer can tell a story that will give them that shiver of uncertainty -- that they are indeed in mortal danger, that things are not as they seem.

Tess Gerritsen, a former internist, began her quest to rattle our collective cages first with romantic suspense novels, then with 1996’s “Harvest,� the first of several successful medical thrillers. Five years ago, she introduced Det. Jane Rizzoli in “The Surgeon,� adding medical examiner Maura Isles to the mix along the way. Together, Rizzoli and Isles have investigated serial killers, the murders of nuns, killers stalking pregnant women and sexual slavery. Besides their attention to medical and forensic detail and their deft incorporation of family and romantic subplots, Gerritsen’s thrillers have increasingly been distinguished by their chilling depictions of the perpetrators of these crimes.

Those elements are again in play in “The Mephisto Club,� the sixth and perhaps most ambitious entry in the series. Three plot lines are juxtaposed here: the maturation of a 15-year old boy in Purity, N.H., who’s adopted by his uncle and aunt, Peter and Amy Saul, after the death of his father, and, 12 years later, his cousin Lily Saul’s desperate flight through Europe from a deadly albeit unseen terror, as well as a string of mutilation murders of young women that have the members of the Boston police department losing their nerve and their holiday dinners at the crime scenes.

Isles and Rizzoli are on the case, but distractions abound -- Isles’ attraction for a Catholic priest and Rizzoli’s parents’ bickering and dueling midlife crises prominent among them. But it’s the murders that draw the sleuths and the reader’s attention with their gruesome purposefulness and the chill they send through the cops and coroners who investigate the case as “members of Death’s entourage.�

Amidst the gore in the apartment of the first victim, 28-year-old Lori-Ann Tucker, three crosses and the word Peccavi have been drawn in blood on a wall. It doesn’t take Rizzoli long to learn that the Latin term means “I have sinned.� But does the phrase refer to the killer or the victim? The search for answers leads her to Dr. Joyce O’Donnell, a neuropsychiatrist who makes a living plumbing the psyches of killers and testifying as an expert witness on their behalf. Rizzoli’s experience with O’Donnell on a previous case that almost killed her has left the detective understandably bitter about the woman she calls “a vampire� and practically obsessed with knowing whether a phone call from the victim’s house to O’Donnell was the killer bragging about his handiwork to an empathetic listener or conferring with his accomplice.

Rizzoli’s suspicions are heightened when she discovers O’Donnell’s alibi for the night of the crime was attendance at a dinner hosted by the rich, handsome Anthony Sansone, who seems to have friends in very high places and a circle of colleagues inordinately interested in Tucker’s murder. When a female detective working the case turns up dead in Sansone’s garden, Rizzoli’s and Isles’ suspicions turn on him and his colleagues -- all members of the Mephisto organization, a group committed to hunting down and eradicating demons and stopping the havoc they wreak on the world. It is a group whose history is as frightening as its quarry.

Gerritsen does a skillful job of intertwining the disparate plots of “The Mephisto Club� while integrating them with the private lives and back stories of Isles, Rizzoli and other members of the detective team. Her explanation of complex forensic details is as crisp and straightforward as ever and her prose, always fluid, manages to rise at times to lyrical levels, especially when describing a cold New England winter. She has also clearly done her homework in demonology, from its ancient to its modern-day connections, using her knowledge to spin a tale that will keep readers feverishly turning pages and hoping for what might be another dose of hair-raising, demon-hunting good fun.

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Paula L. Woods is a frequent contributor to Book Review and the author of the Charlotte Justice mystery series, including, most recently, “Strange Bedfellows.�