I’m back after a year off blogging! Too many things happening at home: a house move, a new job requiring all my energy, constant travelling for work, it was all a bit much, so I decided to let my blog rest. I have been busy though, and have read many books and continued to watch movies and discover new places. I’ll tell  you more in posts to come.

My first post for 2013 is a review of The Sinner, by Tess Gerritsen. I discovered Gerritsen two years ago and have since read many of her novels, in particular those featuring Maura Isles and Jane Rizzoli. Isles is Boston’s Medical Examiner and Rizzoli is a detective. They form an interesting duo, one of them a cold-headed woman, the other as strong-headed as the other one is cold. The Sinner is one of the earlier novels in the series. Each book stands alone and you don’t have to know the personal lives of the main characters to enjoy the fast-paced, sometimes gruesome crime stories that have made Gerritsen famous. In the Sinner, two nuns are brutally murdered – when it turns up that one of them recently gave birth, things turn ugly. Good plot, arresting characters, good pace. What I found interesting in reading The Sinner after having read many of Gerritsen later instalments is the difference in the author’s writing and in how she treats her subject. The first thing I quickly noticed is that her writing wasn’t then quite as slick as it is now. Not the style or choice of words (Gerritsen is good at triggering images in your mind) but the way she described her characters’ personal lives was a little heavy-handed in this novel. Instead of underpinning the story, I found it was sometimes in your face – we were either in the story or in the character’s personal dilemmas, not in both at the same time. To me, her recent novels show better skills in mixing the plot with the characters’ lives. She’s also more subtle, and it works well. Don’t get me wrong, Gerritsen’s early Isles and Rizzoli’s books are excellent, always exhibiting an arresting plot and fast pace. I have another one of hers to read in my pile and I look forward to reading it.