Life Support

I chose this book because I'm trying to complete a challenge and the cover was one of the points I needed to cross of.

It's not the kind of novel that I'm fond of reading, but when you're awake in the middle of the night while nursing my young son it was just perfect to read. Not too difficult and it actually felt pretty tightly wrapped without too much of the usual romance in these 'crime' novels. Of course it wouldn't fit the genre if it didn't fiddle a little bit with a certain love interest.

The story revolves around Toby Harper, a emergency doctor, who runs the night shift. One night the police brings in a distraught naked man. While she tries to understand what is happening, another emergency erupts. The patient disappears and she's trying to figure out what happened.
What follows is a clinical crime where human trials have gone terribly wrong. Where a human life doesn't have any value when there isn't any money backing it up.

The story was very straight forward. It was pretty clear in which direction it was headed. All in all, it felt like a B-movie. Good for a quick read, but not something I'm going to remember in the long run.

Review of The Sinner

Within the walls of a cloistered convent, a scene of unspeakable carnage is discovered. On the snow lie two nuns, one dead, one critically injured - victims of a seemingly motiveless, brutally savage attack.

Medical examiner Maura Isles' autopsy of the murder victim yields a shocking surprise, but the case takes a disturbing twist. The body of another woman has been found. And someone has gone to a lot trouble to remove her face, hands and feet.

As long buried secrets are revealed so Dr Isles and homicide detective Jane Rizzoli, find themselves part of an investigation that leads to an awful, dawning realisation of the killer's identity... (www.goodreads.com)

I'm not a tremendous big fan of thrillers or detectives. I used to read them by the dozen a decade ago, but somewhere down the road I've taken to other kinds of novels. 
For one thing, I almost always sense the plot from miles away which isn't as fun as you would think. The satisfaction you get by getting it right, is spoiled because you miss the shock effect. 
Before I decided to read this, I checked out this writer and she was supposed to be a plottwisting, never seeing what's around the corner, kind of witch doctor. 
Well, in reality she's a doctor, but I didn't find her novel all that surprising. And the characters, Isles and Rizzoli, never got to me. I identify more with characters in television series than I did with them. Maybe the televised series are more for me. :) 
The Sinner was not as good as I thought it would have been, but I finished it and that alone is saying a lot. 

My personal rating: 2 stars