Part of Rizzoli & Isles, book 9
First published 2011
Detective Jane Rizzoli discovers a gruesome crime scene in a Boston Chinatown alley. A severed hand lies in the shadows below while the victim's body rests on a tenement roof above. The red-haired woman dressed in black has nearly been decapitated. Two strands of silver hair that aren't human provide the only clues for Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles. Their investigation reveals this brutal killing connects to a nineteen-year-old murder-suicide that claimed five lives in a Chinatown restaurant. One survivor from that massacre still lives, a martial arts master who guards a dangerous secret. This woman becomes the target of someone or something that pursues her with relentless malice. The case forces Rizzoli and Isles to confront an enemy that may have supernatural origins, one that strikes with ancient cunning and deadly precision. They must solve a crime that echoes an old Chinese legend before more blood spills in Chinatown's narrow streets.
Genres: mystery, crime, thriller, detective
Vibes: dark, emotional, fast-paced, suspenseful
Tropes: amateur-sleuth, enemies-to-lovers, supernatural-elements
Setting: Boston, Chinatown
Period: 19th-century, 20th-century
315 pages · Hardcover · Random House Publishing Group
Content warnings: graphic-violence, murder