Silent Girl

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

In the murky shadows of an alley lies a female’s severed hand. On the tenement rooftop above is the corpse belonging to that hand, a red-haired woman dressed all in black, the body nearly decapitated. Two strands of silver hair — not human — cling to her body. They are Rizzoli’s only clues, but they’re enough for her and medical examiner Maura Isles to make a startling discovery: This violent death had a chilling prequel. Nineteen years earlier, a horrifying murder-suicide in a Chinatown restaurant left five people dead. One woman connected to that massacre is still alive: a mysterious martial arts master who knows a secret she dares not tell, a secret that lives and breathes in the shadows of Chinatown. A secret that may not even be human. Now she’s the target of someone, or something, deeply and relentlessly evil. Cracking a crime resonating with bone-chilling echoes of an ancient Chinese legend, Rizzoli and Isles must outwit an unseen enemy with centuries of cunning — and a swift, avenging blade.

Publisher’s Weekly:

“In Gerritsen’s gripping ninth Rizzoli & Isles novel (after Ice Cold), a severed hand found on a Chinatown street leads Det. Jane Rizzoli, Boston PD, to a rooftop, where she discovers a female body with a slit throat and without a hand. About the only clues to the Jane Doe’s identity are silvery hairs on the victim’s clothes that may not be human. Rizzoli and her team uncover a link to a 19-year-old murder/suicide case, in which an illegal immigrant cook, Wu Weimin, allegedly shot a waiter, three customers, and himself inside the Red Phoenix restaurant late one night. Some people in Chinatown still believe Wu was innocent. Meanwhile, in a strange coincidence, two missing girls turnout to be related to victims of the Red Phoenix massacre. Medical examiner Maura Isles plays a supporting role, though both women deal with personal and family issues that reveal their humanity and lend credibility to this deft thriller.”