Vanish: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

Medical examiner Maura Isles is examining a body that turns out to be alive, and before the mystery woman can be identified, she has killed a security guard and taken the hospital hostage. Among the hostages is Detective Jane Rizzoli, heavily pregnant. The standoff and the investigation running outside it converge on a conspiracy that reaches from the crime scene into international human trafficking. Tess Gerritsen's fifth Rizzoli and Isles novel earned the Edgar Award and the Macavity Award, and it earns both through relentless, controlled narrative tension.

Susan Denaker brings full command to the dual-protagonist setup that defines the series, keeping Maura's forensic precision and Jane's street-level instincts equally present even in chapters where only one of them is active. The hostage scenario's stakes are rendered without melodrama, and Denaker gives Rizzoli's pregnancy a physicality that makes the danger feel very immediate. At just over eleven hours, this award-winning entry is one of the series' strongest.