Body Double

I just needed a quick read. Preferably a crime caper that would keep me on the edge of the seat and help me finish off the nail that had grown a yukto-milimeter = 10 power minus twenty four (Is there really such a measure? Do people actually go about measuring such small amounts? Crazy!!). So, I picked up this single book in my library that said “Body Double” by an author I had unheard of, Tess Gerritsen, a new genre writer of thrillers, I supposed.

It’s one thing to read about crime, especially of the gruesome type, but yet another to read about how the cadavers of the victims are taken apart in figuring out the crimes themselves. In Body Double, Tess Gerritsen does just that. In a blog post where writers write about the back stories of their own books, Gerritsen says that the plot point for this book came from imagining how it might feel if one had to witness oneself being autopsied - and this she details to captivating extent, framing the driving point of the plot.

There are several layers to this apparent crime/thriller novel. On one level it is a straight forward plot of crime by an animal who is both driven by the rationale of making money as well as an emotional imbalance with a taste for the macabre, and that precisely is the problem. Either a crime is perpetuated by the psychotic or by a fully functional human for rational reasons such as jealousy or greed, but how does one account for a beast with a fascination for the morbid and who uses it making money in an organized way? How does one explain the eventuality that he actually perpetuates it into a family business? And even worse, how does one explain away the fact that this animal dies like an average family man bought into hospital by his loving family, when several families were broken and several children orphaned by his fantastic occupation? How does one explain the lack of justice and retribution which is the compelling issue in any study of crime?

On another level, this book talks of the innocent who by chance is a kindred soul of the animal. The central character of the book is Dr.Maura Isles, a Boston Medical Examiner who loves the precision of her job of autopsying crime cadavers. The book starts with her returning from a conference in Paris and finding a crime scene investigation on her porch. People are surprised to see her since she was the one who was supposed to be dead. One look at the victim makes it clear that the bewilderment is because of the identical physical match with the said Doctor. A DNA analysis proves that they are genetically related – perhaps twins. A background check reveals that they were both given up for adoption, handled by the same agent. That would have been enough for me to go on a personal crusade. To find out how my twin happened to be shot in the head in front of my house, when I didn’t even know she existed should be enough to pique my curiosity. But then Garritsen decides to take Dr.Isles, a rational medical expert into the autopsy room and show how it feels when it could have been her, under the merciless scalpel.

The author further tortures her protagonist by making her trace the path which the dead twin, a microbiologist, had traversed before her, eventually leading her to a correctional facility where her apparently deranged mother is incarcerated. The doctors can’t quite make up their mind if she is unhinged and the ‘mom’ plays the part of psychotic-but not quite, exceedingly well. She was sentenced for the murder of two sisters, one of them pregnant. The visits are an emotional roller coaster ride for the Dr.Isles who has to now doubt her own moral fiber. Is the love for the cadaver genetic?

While the bigger crime and central part of story, with the gory crime and ancestral linage of the protagonist, kind of gets resolved by itself - really, no one solves it, the other part of the story including the murder of the twin kind of takes the readers to a different plane.

Move over, moral dilemma, there is one more layer I can think of. So as to not give the plot away, I’ll pose them thoughts to Tess Gerritsen. Was it some kind of kooky humour, using a full term pregnant police office in a crime involving pregnant woman? Why could’nt Ballard, the Boston Police Officer, have been given a chance? I had quite started to like him – actually I had to keep telling myself not to invest too much in him, lest he turn out to be dreadful character. I couldn’t quite make out if all the attention he was paying Dr.Isles was for real. Even if their relationship was on shaky grounds, I liked him better than the confused priest, that Maura seems to fancy. I really wish you had let Ballard be! Sulk!

Although my library has only one out of the series of 6 books with the Boston Police characters in it, I know I will devour them all when I lay my hands on them! Thank you Tess!