Last to Die

Some children carry the worst kind of luck — the kind that follows them. Teddy Clock has survived not one but two mass murders, each time the only one left standing, and no one can explain why. When Boston detective Jane Rizzoli starts digging into his case, what looks like tragic coincidence begins to reveal something far more deliberate and far more frightening. Gerritsen builds her tension around a genuinely unsettling question: what if a child's survival isn't random, but is actually the point?

Gerritsen's tenth Rizzoli & Isles novel demonstrates exactly why she remains one of the sharpest writers in the genre. She structures the book around a boarding school setting that feels both sheltering and deeply claustrophobic, and she uses that tension to keep the pages moving fast without sacrificing character. Rizzoli is as grounded and compelling as ever, but the real achievement here is Teddy — rendered with enough complexity that his plight feels genuinely urgent rather than merely functional. This is thriller writing that trusts its readers to feel things, not just follow clues.