AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: The Bone Garden

TITLE: The Bone Garden
AUTHOR: Tess Gerritsen
NARRATOR: Susan Denaker
PUBLISHER: Random House Audio
DATE OF PUBLICATION: September 18, 2007
FORMAT: Unabridged Audio CD (10 CDs - 13 hours)
GENRE: Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Historical Fiction
ISBN: 0739343246

SYNOPSIS FROM GOODREADS: 

Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil - human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder. 

Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, medical student Norris Marshall has joined the ranks of local “resurrectionists” - those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. But when a distinguished doctor is found murdered and mutilated on university grounds, Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect. 

With unflagging suspense and pitch-perfect period detail, THE BONE GARDEN deftly traces the dark mystery at its heart across time and place to a finale as ingeniously conceived as it is shocking.

MY REVIEW:

This is my first book by this author.

The central character, Julia Hamill, discovers a skeleton buried in the garden of the Boston house she has just moved into. The ring found with the remains suggests that the body is from the 1830s and is ruled a homicide. The book flashes from the present day to the 1830s. The flashbacks describe the medical system and childbirth as it was back then, often in graphic detail which might put some people off. I, personally, found it fascinating.

I thought Gerritsen did a very good job flipping back and forth between the two time periods. She even threw some historical facts into the book, including Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who was ahead of his time when he argued that childbirth fever was spread by person-to-person contact via the doctor’s lack of hygiene.

The narrator, Susan Denaker, was very good. I enjoyed listening to her!

I will be looking for more from this author. 

MY RATING: 4 stars!

This book qualifies as:
#2 for my 2011 Audio Book Challenge
#2 for my 2011 "Whisper Stories in My Ear" Challenge
#3 for my 2011 100+ Reading Challenge