Burial chamber (novel)

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Burial chamber

Burial Chamber is a thriller by the American author Tess Gerritsen . The novel, published by Limes Verlag in May 2009 , is the seventh story in which Jane Rizzoli plays the leading role. The German edition, translated by Andreas Jäger, immediately reached first place on the bestseller list. The original English-language edition is called The Keepsake and was published in 2008 by Ballantine-Verlag.

action

A mummy , known as Madam X and from the non-cataloged holdings of the Boston Crispin Museum, caused a stir. The CT examination, which was accompanied by great media interest, was attended by forensic doctor Maura Isles, the curator of the museum, Nicholas Robinson, and Egyptologist Josephine Pulcillo. There is a pistol bullet in Madam X's leg. The corresponding callus formation proves that the injury was not inflicted post-mortem, although the linen bandages of the mummy were dated to an age of more than 2000 years. During the subsequent autopsy, which Maura carried out in the presence of detectives Jane Rizzoli and Barry Frost, she found a gold plaque in the mummy's mouth in the form of a cartridge with the inscription “I was at the pyramids” and the name Medea .

At home, Josephine misses her keys and receives the message addressed to Josephine Sommer: “The police are not your friends”. Debbie Duke leads Jane and Barry in the museum to their boss Simon Crispin, who tells the detectives something about the former curator William Scott-Kerr, suffering from Alzheimer's disease .

When the police searched the basement of the museum, they discovered three shrunken heads behind a wall . A 26-year-old newspaper from Indio (California) is in one of the tsantsas . Josephine, who reacts very nervously to the discovery, receives the written request “Find me” with the coordinates of the Blue Hills Reservation at home . After finding her keys there, she comes across a well-preserved corpse in the trunk of her car.

Thereupon she flees to her friend Gemma Hamerton in Waverly . After a rendezvous with the priest Daniel, Maura receives a visit from Anthony Sansone. The member of the Mephisto Club tells her that the Crispins benefit from wars. Both Madam X and the body discovered by Josephine were crippled from leg injuries some time before her death. While the expert Vandenbrink recognizes a bog body similar to the girl from Yde in the latest victim , Madam X is identified as Lorraine Edgerton, who worked as an archaeologist in New Mexico 25 years ago and disappeared without a trace. Frost has determined that the bog corpse must have come from a bog in the northeastern United States. The police also received information that a Josephine Pulcillo died in an accident in San Diego 24 years ago .

Jane and Barry visit Professor Quigley on an excavation in Chaco Canyon , on which Lorraine and Bradley, son of rich financier Kimball Rose, were also involved. However, Bradley went from Chaco Canyon to the Crispin Museum early on. Kimball tells the detectives that he and his son were looking for Cambyses' lost army in Egypt . He refuses to provide any further information, but his seriously ill wife, Cynthia, implies that Bradley has been admitted to a Maine mental institution . Detective Crowe reports to his colleagues that the body of Jimmy Otto, who was shot there, was buried near a house in San Diego where Josephine lived with her mother twelve years ago. The mother and daughter fled San Diego. The perverted Jimmy was in both the Hilzbrich Institute psychiatry and Chaco Canyon at the same time as Bradley.

The murderer kills Gemma in her house and shoots the escaping Josephine in the leg. In the hospital, Jane confronts Josephine with her past in San Diego. Josephine claims that her mother, Medea, who died in a car accident three years ago, shot herself in self-defense . They then fled for an older crime. Her father allegedly died before she was born during the Cambyses excavation, at which Gemma was also present. Jane brings Josephine back to Boston. In conversation with her husband Gabriel, the policewoman realizes that all the victims are similar to Medea. Bradley and Jimmy pursued Medea early on, which brought them a complaint, which Medea withdrew.

Simon Crispin, who was also there in Egypt, reveals to Josephine, who is now back at the museum, that Kimball helped her get the job. Shortly after the conversation, Simon is murdered in the basement and Josephine is kidnapped. Frost, already troubled by marital problems with Alice, is desperate because he was supposed to pick up Josephine from the museum that evening and withdraws from the investigation for the time being while Kimball threatens Jane. Maura receives a “Find me” message with the coordinates of her own house and finds Josephine's hair cut off in the garden. Jane shows that the Shrunken Head was also a dark-haired beauty, which would make Maura fit the scheme.

Jane learns from Doctor Hilzbrich that Bradley as a follower and Jimmy as a leader complement each other well. Frost returns to the team back and finds out that the found on the bog body Orono - sedge grows only in Maine, right where the empty building of Hilzbrich Institute is located. Josephine remembers in her dungeon that she herself fired the fatal shot in San Diego, and learns during an attempt to escape that her kidnapper is not acting alone. Jane discovers other corpses in the moor next to the Hilzbrich Institute and Barry brings the believed Medea Sommer to her hotel.

Medea reveals to them that she had a relationship with Bradley in Egypt, from which their daughter Josephine emerged. She then fled Bradley, but Kimball used money and threats to force Josephine to withdraw her complaint. She also explains that the dead man in San Diego is not Jimmy but Bradley. Jimmy's sister apparently wanted to protect her brother by misidentifying the body. Jane suspects Josephine is at Carrie's home in Framington.

There Jane and Barry save themselves from their exploding car. They meet Jimmy and Carrie, whom they met as Debbie in the museum. There is a confrontation between Medea and Jimmy and several shots in which the Otto siblings die.

Kimball raids Medea at her apartment after another police officer confused him by stating that he identified Jimmy's DNA on the body in San Diego. However, the police are prepared and listen as Kimball confesses that he hid Bradley's death and forged DNA in San Diego. Finally, Kimball shoots herself and Medea drives to her daughter.

background

In addition to her medical expertise, the author also uses archaeological knowledge in her novel. The three types of corpse conservation (mummy, shrunken head, bog corpse) were actually practiced. The girl of Yde and Cambyses II are historical figures. Through the personal relationships between Jane and Gabriel and Maura and Daniel, which are thematized in subplots, the novel builds on the previous works in the Rizzoli series.

Reviews

The reviews were very different.

Jochen König from krimi-couch.de shows no interest in “lengthy excursions into archaeological specialties” and describes “the book that is not very thoughtful and that would not even overwhelm a shrunken head” as a “soft soap opera for amateur archaeologists” because of the lack of tension. Michael Sterzik at buchwurm.info comes to a less negative conclusion, praising “the medical and historical approaches”. In his opinion, "time actually plays the biggest role", but because "the plot and the resulting tension [...] concentrate entirely on the person of the young archaeologist", he misses a few surprises.

On the other hand, Silke Schröder rates the novel very positively on hallo-buch.de. For them it is a "real page turner with guaranteed goose bumps that you only put down after reading it". Manuela Martini comes to the realization at Focus Online that Tess Gerritsen presents a more sophisticated serial killer for "hardened crime readers who are well versed in all kinds of killing methods [...]. The reviewer praises the complexity of the story: “Where many stories are heading straight for the burial chamber on the home straight [...], Gerritsen builds a side tunnel, another secret staircase and a hidden door until they finally explode the heavy gate to the burial chamber in front of us leaves."

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tess Gerritsen opens the "burial chamber" at number one. Media Control, June 2, 2009, accessed July 10, 2009 .
  2. ↑ Jochen König: Tomb of Tess Gerritsen. krimi-couch.de, June 2009, accessed on July 10, 2009 .
  3. ↑ Michael Sterzik: Book Reviews Grabkammer (Gerritsen, Tess). buchwurm.info, June 3, 2009, accessed July 10, 2009 .
  4. ↑ Silke Schröder: Tess Gerritsen: burial chamber. hallo-buch.de, May 22, 2009, accessed July 10, 2009 .
  5. ↑ Manuela Martini: Mummies in the basement. Focus online, May 26, 2009, accessed July 10, 2009 .