REVIEW: ‘The Bone Garden’ by Tess Gerritsen

The Bone Gar­denby Tess Ger­rit­sen is more of a his­tor­i­cal mys­tery that is told alter­nately between the present day and the past. The story opens with a mis­sive from O.W.H. refer­ring to the events in 1830 regard­ing the West End Reaper, a killer who ter­ror­ized South Boston dur­ing that time. 

The author decides to trans­port the reader back to 1830 to see how those events unfold first hand. I must admit that I’m not a big fan of alter­nat­ing time peri­ods, however, the author does a good job alter­nat­ing back and forth in time with­out it dis­rupt­ing the flow of the story.

In the open­ing of the story, Julia Hamill has just moved into her Weston home, a decrepit, old house built back in the 1880’s. It’s an impul­sive buy since Julia’s most recent divorce.  So, one day, while out dig­ging in her gar­den, Julia’s shovel unearths a human skull and the police are called in to inves­ti­gate.  Dr. Maura Isles is called to the res­i­dence to exam­ine the bones and decides that it’s not a ME case.

She then refers it to Dr. Petrie, a foren­sic anthro­pol­o­gist who after exam­in­ing the com­plete skele­ton states that the pre­mor­bid frac­tures on the skull is indica­tive of foul play.  Shortly after that, Julia gets a call from Henry Page, an 89-year old fam­ily his­to­rian and cousin of the pre­vi­ous owner, Hilda Cham­blett, who died of nat­ural causes on the prop­erty that Julia now owns.  Hilda had left behind boxes, papers and old news­pa­per clip­pings that Henry even­tu­ally inher­ited. So, Henry offers Julia a chance to go through the archives and see if there is any story relat­ing to the bones found in Julia’s garden.

The author then shifts the story to 1830 and we are intro­duced to Nor­ris Mar­shall, a farm boy from Bel­mont who has been accepted into the Boston Col­lege of Med­i­cine. Nor­ris is no blue blood. He’s pen­ni­less with no con­nec­tions or fam­ily of influ­ence. His ambi­tion is to be a good doc­tor and so far he has suc­ceeded in becom­ing a skilled anatomist.

As a bar­gain to pay for some of his tuition, Nor­ris goes out at night with the other local “res­ur­rec­tion­ists”, uncov­er­ing shal­low graves , look­ing for fresh bod­ies for Dr. Thomas Sewall’s dis­sec­tion table. It’s a lucra­tive job and an ille­gal one, too.  The scarcity of cadav­ers in med­ical schools has cre­ated a lucra­tive black mar­ket for grave rob­bing.  Only con­victed mur­der­ers were auto­mat­i­cally sent to the anatomist table but with a small per­cent­age of bod­ies com­ing from the executioner, demand has out­stripped supply. 

The most inte­gral part of the plot cen­ters around Meggie, the daugh­ter born to an Irish immigrant. The baby’s aunt, Rose Con­nelly, a seam­stress who stays in squalid con­di­tions to secure her niece a wet nurse, is her only fam­ily. Shortly after Meg­gie is born, two nurses are bru­tally mur­dered within short prox­im­ity of the hos­pi­tal. Rose sus­pects it has some­thing to do with the baby and hides her. In the interim, Nor­ris is a sus­pect sim­ply by cir­cum­stance and his skill as an anatomist and so he seeks out the only other per­son who has ever claimed to see the West End Reaper: Rose Con­nolly. So, Norris and Rose work together and with the help of Oliver Wen­dall Holmes, they unlock the mys­tery that threat­ens to unravel secrets which can lead to a huge social scandal.

The best parts of the novel for me were the parts that focused on the med­ical pro­ce­dures and the his­tory of med­i­cine. I enjoyed the lec­ture and the dis­sec­tion class led by Dr. Thomas Sewall (who was con­victed of grave rob­bing). I enjoyed trav­el­ing with the local res­ur­rec­tion­ist in his search for fresh bod­ies risk­ing a mis­de­meanor and impris­on­ment. The author uses real life char­ac­ters, most notably, Oliver Wen­dell Holmes, a physi­cian who came up with the novel con­cept that doc­tors needed to “wash their hands” to help pre­vent the spread of dis­ease. Many times doc­tors would leave straight from the autopsy table to deliver babies with­out wash­ing their hands.  My least favorite parts of the novel would be the romance that crops up toward the end of the novel.  I felt that it was tacked on and unnecessary.

While the sus­pense part of the novel was well done, the res­o­lu­tion of it left much to be desired. The vil­lain sim­ply came out of nowhere for me and the moti­va­tion behind the killing spree was pretty far fetched. I don’t think it was ever revealed as to real iden­tify of  The West End Reaper. Then finally, when the story con­cludes in the present day, with Julia find­ing true love through kismet, I rolled my eyes and closed the book with a sigh.

All in all, not a bad book. The novel had a slow start, strong mid­dle with a unsat­is­fac­tory con­clu­sion for me. I felt that the tragic end­ing while unex­pected, it was com­pletely unwar­ranted and took way from the book.  After much con­tem­pla­tion, I’d rate this book a B. The sum of it’s best parts slightly out­weigh the neg­a­tive for me and the novel is well researched and enter­tain­ing. A rec­om­mended read if your local library has a copy.

The Bone Gar­den is avail­able at Ama​zon​.com and at Fic­tion­wise as an ebook.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Tess Ger­rit­sen, His­tor­i­cal Mys­tery, Boston, Massachusetts