Devlin Lynden

The Mephisto Club – Tess Gerritsen

Its is Christmas day in Boston but for the lead character Dr Maura Isles it is a horrible day, as instead of spending her Christmas with her friends and family she is called to a crime scene and a run down house in the suburbs of Boston. In side the house there is a dismembered body with cryptic and satanic symbols written in various places. Soon after an other murder took place, this time on beacon hill. The body had been mutilated and left underneath the veranda of a rich man house, very close to the home of The Mephisto Club. The Mephisto club is a secretive society thats prime directive is to study evil and its agenda is to “confront it in its most unadulterated forms”. Detective Jane Rizzoli also becomes involved with the investigation. Both woman soon discover that they are up against the purest of evil. They are at a meeting with the Mephisto club as another body appears at their door step making them think that it is actually them that are being targeted. They believe it is some kind of ancient evil. In the end the boy leads are murdered in the same fashion as the previous two murders and the case is picked up by The Mephisto club. the book then ends leaving no clear understanding of who did the murders or what caused them.

Dr Razzoli constantly feels as though she is failing in this case. She feels that all the clues are right there and she should know the awnser, However she is unable to place the pieces together. This made her feel disappointed and upset as she felt that she had something to prove and that she could be the one to show the murderer up. She show her feelings about this case in her home life when she is with her partner and is often stressed about the case. “how can they be out there and it be so obvious, yet i am going round in circles” This shows her frustration and how she feels stuck and disappointed in herself. I feel like this is relatable to me, Often in different classes at school and in different areas of my personal life i get disappointed by the work that i have done and struggle to see how i can improve on it and what i am doing wrong. Just like Dr Razzoli this cause’s stress and frustration when I’m at home.

In the second chapter of this book a horrible murder scene is described with dismembered body parts, demonic symbols and blood everywhere. There have been several reported incidences of thing like this actually happening, however rear it may be. If you happened to come across something like this in the real world i couldn’t imagine how scaring it would be. Even knowing that something like this has the potential of happening and has happened in the past before is a scary through.
This book felt a bit slow in places and didnt flow through out the chapters very well as sometimes it cut from character to character causing there to be some discontinuity, especially if you read it over the span of a month like i did. Despite that the greek gods and believes written in to the book really interested me and i had great fun reading it.