Millie Jacobson is in the middle of the Botswana bush trying to salvage what’s left of her relationship with her boyfriend, noted mystery author Richard Renwick. This trek through the bush is his dream vacation, sleeping in a tent, cooking over an open fire, watching the wildlife while Millie would rather be in a hotel, sleeping in a soft bed, lounging in a warm bath, sipping drinks on the veranda. And for a while it was tolerable…until the killing started. Millie was lucky to get away with her life.
In Boston, Detective Jane Rizzoli is called to a murder scene in which noted hunter and taxidermist Leon Gott has been hung upside down and gutted, as a hunter would do with his prey. Later she is called to a second murder scene in which Jodi Underwood, Leon’s estranged son’s girlfriend, is struck down.
Can these incidents in Boston and Botswana, separated by oceans and six years apart, be linked? That’s the conclusion that Rizzoli and Medical Examiner Maura Isles come to, after much back and forth and changing of theories. But up to the very end, both the reader and the detectives aren’t 100% certain.
While I’ve read Tess Gerritsen before (Playing with Fire which I really liked but which was also a dramatically different type of book) I’ve never read a Rizzoli and Isles book, nor have I seen the TV show. I enjoyed Die Again but didn’t think it was the best mystery I’ve read. There’s action. There are twists and turns. There’s back and forth between detectives. There’s the disliked thorn in their sides, Detective Crowe. There’s a bit of history. You learn a bit about predator cats.
Yet, it just wasn’t a gripping book. I guess I’d say, Die Again is a good book if you’re in a pinch to read something and can’t get to the library and it’s lying around on your coffee table. While I wouldn’t avoid reading another book in the series, I certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to read it.
Two Heads Together 
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