Tess Gerritsen is an ice-queen. Beautiful, polished and in total control the mask never slips. She is the consummate professional. But underneath she inhabits a very different world.
She is ready to reveal her latest masterpiece, the latest in a series which further cements her place in the underbelly of the crime world: serial murderers are inside her head; the morgue is her chosen haunt; thank God for the cops who track her path.
In a rundown house a woman has been dismembered in an act of carnage that leaves veteran cops in shock. The last person called from the dead girl's phone is Dr. Joyce O'Donnell, a celebrity psychiatrist who's made her name defending serial murderers. But there are other clues that make the police wonder if this slaying was part of a Satanic ritual. Drawn on the wall, in blood, are ancient symbols, and a mirror-image word in Latin that, translated, says: “I have sinned.”
Then a second woman is found butchered on Beacon Hill, just outside the grand residence of Anthony Sansone, a reclusive historian. He is the leader of the Mephisto Club, an old and secret society dedicated to the study of evil, and to confronting it in its purest form. On the door to Sansone's house have been scrawled yet more ancient symbols. Are they clues? Or threats?
When the same symbols appear on Maura Isles' door, Maura and Jane must call on the Mephisto Club for assistance. Because this is a form of evil Boston PD has never encountered before. And the only way they can defeat it is by turning to the people who understand the devil himself.
If the darkest impulses could live and breathe and walk among us, what face would they wear? And who would dare stand against them?
Bestselling author Tess Gerritsen is also a physician, and she brings to her novels her first-hand knowledge of emergency and autopsy rooms. But her interests span far more than medical topics.
As an Anthropology student at Stanford University, she catalogued centuries old human remains, and she continues to travel the world driven by her fascination with ancient cultures and bizarre natural phenomena. She lives with her husband in Maine and her previous bestsellers include Vanish, The Apprentice and The Surgeon
For more information about Tess Gerritsen, click here
To read some extracts from the book click here.
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