(K)(2006) Jane Rizzoli & Maura Isles are drawn into a satanic tale of the Mephisto Club whose goal is to find and destroy the devil incarnate. It appears that several murders are linked to the Devil but there has to be a logical explanation. Another good book by Gerritsen.Kirkus ReviewsDemons-'R-Us in this formulaic entry by one of the queens of the romance/thriller hybrid (Body Double, 2004, etc.). It's a very un-merry Christmas Eve for both Boston Medical Examiner Dr. Maura Isles and her friend and colleague Detective Jane Rizzoli, who find themselves called to Beacon Hill on business-an exceptionally brutal business. A young woman has been murdered, decapitated, dismembered, and on her bedroom wall, drawn in blood, there's a gnomic message left by her killer: three upside-down crosses and some symbols that at the moment defy interpretation. Enter the Mephisto Club, a kind of international think tank (read: symbol-unravellers) dedicated to the pursuit of unhappiness for all infernal creatures. Convinced that demons walk among us-on the surface indistinguishable from ordinary folk-Mephisto members make their expertise available to law-enforcement organizations such as Interpol, Scotland Yard and now the Boston PD. Skeptical Jane isn't all that impressed. Maura is sort of on the fence as to Satan-real or Satan-metaphor, but is less than focused on the issue. Actually, neither lady is quite her single-minded self these days. Jane is distracted by the flare-up in her parents' home. Her father may be philandering; her mother has retaliated with short skirts, push-up bras and come-hither looks. As for Maura, so smitten is she with handsome priest Father Daniel Brophy ("If I could sell my soul to Satan for your love, I think I would") that she is, in effect, benched. Nevertheless, the investigation does progress, and finally the suspects are all collected, Agatha Christie-like, in a remote mountain lodge, for the denouement. Some sizable plot holes, some purplish prose("Friendships are broken all the time, so are hearts"), but the Gerritsen fan base will survive intact.

Goede spannende thriller zoals we ondertussen gewoon zijn van Tess Gerritsen.
Het verhaal sleurt je vanaf de eerste pagina mee.

In begin van het boek wordt je in feite voorgesteld aan de dader.
Jane & Maura krijgen een verschrikkelijke moordzaak voorgeschoteld. Een moord op een jong vrouw waarvan het lichaam volledig in stukken is gehakt en overal in het huis zijn vreemde tekens en een Latijnse zin op de muur geschreven.
Is dit een rituele moord?
Al snel blijkt uit hun onderzoek dat er een tweede slachtoffer is.
De moorden volgen elkaar daarna op in een snel tempo.
Door het onderzoek komen ze terecht bij een selectief groepje de Mefisto Club, zij zijn onderzoekers naar het kwaad, volgens hen is Satan hier aan het werk en geeft hij hen hints met de symbolen die op elke misdaadscene worden achtergelaten.
Zullen ze de moordenaar tijdig vinden voordat ook zij slachtoffers worden?
Tussen de speurtocht van Jane door maken we kennis met Lilly het nichtje van de dader welke rol speelt zij in dit verhaal. Wat is er 12jaar geleden gebeurd waardoor ze nu op de vlucht is?
Op het einde van het boek vallen alle stukjes in elkaar.
Lilly had geprobeerd haar neef te vermoorden nadat hij haar ouders en broertje had vermoord.
Ze dacht dat ze hem gedood had maar blijkbaar heeft hij haar aanval overleeft en hij zint dan ook op wraak.
Samen met zijn moeder wou hij Lilly, Maura, Jane en de Mefisto club vermoorden.
Gelukkig kunnen Lilly en Jane hen stoppen.

( )

Wow. I'm going to take a break from these for a while. Two extremely dark installments in a row. Yikes. I've always known Nephilim to be the race of half human-half angel warriors that protect us from evil. That's not the case in this book. In this book they are the evil.so says the Mephisto Foundation. So basically this book dives deep into folie-a-deux. Creeps me right out. ( )

Tightly written and the action moves along at a good pace. Some of the side stories involving forbidden love and marital discord seem superfluous but Gerritsen does give us an interesting twist on the psycho killer theme when she introduces a whiff of the supernatural. ( )

They looked like the perfect family. This was what the boy thought as he listened to the hired minister read platitudes from the Bible.
Only a small group had gathered on that warm and buggy June day to mourn the passing of Montague Saul, no more than a dozen people, many of whom the boy had just met. For the past six months, he had been away at boarding school, and today he was seeing some of these people for the first time. Most of them did not interest him in the least. But the uncle's family-they interested him very much. They were worth studying.