Harvest - Tess Gerritsen > Reviews (5)

Well then my fellow ciaoers I'm afraid its time for me to launch another book review upon you. This time its the debut novel by a writer now very well regarded and reguarly tops the best seller lists.

I will warn you now that the book is not 'literature' in fact that genre rarely gets as far as me picking it up, so if you are after a thriller based around a medical community this could be worth a look.

Harvest's main character is a second year surgical intern Dr Abby DiMatteo, working at Boston Bayside hospital. She has to make a decision about the final recipient of a heart transplant does she allow the hospitals administration to make the decision or does she do what she can to get the heart donated to a 17 year old boy who is already at the hospital?

Of course she does what she can to arrange that the 17 year old should get the heart and in the process gets on the wrong side of the very rich and very influencial Mr Voss, whos wife was 'meant' to have been the recipient. He causes all kinds of trouble for Abby and due to the twists and turns of the plot ends up getting suspended from work.

During her suspension she has time to investigate her suspiscions that there is an illegal dealing in human organs going on at Bayside and even worse for her is the idea that the whole transplant team is in on it as her boyfriend is one of the surgeons on the team. Enroute to her suspension she meets Katzka a police officer with the homicide division and between them they begin to unravel the threads of the deceptions.

Meanwhile what is the significance of the boatload of Russian orphans?

Of course in the end the mystery is solved but you won't see the end until it is upon you due to the number of twists and turns in the plot. The medical stuff I presume is reasonable accurate as the author was a doctor. The book was originally published in 1996 and in Abby you can see the beginnings of both the now better known characters Maura Isles and Jane Rizzoli. Personally I don't think it as as good as her newer books but that could be because her writing style has matured and her characters are more full developed as usually now they feature the either of the two women mentioned above.

If you have read any of Tess Gerritsen's more recent books then this one is well worth a read, it was recently republished with a new cover and I picked it up at tesco at the time, it is now avaliable on amazon for £1 in the market place. It is 510 pages long and contains chapters of a reasonable length making it easy enough to pick up and put it down again if you wanted to.