The Bone Garden

Last updated

The Bone Garden is a 2007 novel written by Tess Gerritsen, loosely part of the Jane Rizzoli / Maura Isles series.

Plot summary

The book delves into Boston's past (1830), with Maura Isles playing a cameo role in present-day Boston. In the present, recently divorced 38-year-old Julia Hamill, trying to plant a garden for her newly purchased rural Massachusetts home finds a female skull buried in the rocky soil. She contacts medical examiner Maura Isles who finds it scarred with the marks of murder but can discover no more due to the skull's age.

In the past, Boston in 1830, Norris Marshall, a talented but poor student at Boston Medical College attempts to pay his college tuition by being a resurrectionist - one who plunders graveyards to sell the corpses on the black market. When two nurses are found murdered (one on the hospital grounds) as well as a respected doctor, Norris is considered as the prime suspect; he has had a glimpse of the killer at the second murder scene.

Norris, attempting to clear himself, attempts to track down the only other witness to have caught a glimpse (at the first murder scene), a beautiful 17-year-old Irish immigrant seamstress named Rose Connolly who fears she may be the next victim, exacerbated by the need to protect her newborn niece Meggie. Rose, Norris and his classmate Oliver Wendell Holmes comb the city, from its grim cemeteries and autopsy suites to its glittering mansions and power centers, to track down the killer.

Central to the plot is the condition of maternity wards at the time: doctors often walked in from the autopsy area to the "lying-in" wards, and handle the women without using gloves (let alone antisepsis, which Holmes later suggested) putting the women at higher risk of childbirth deaths than if they had given birth attended by midwives, or even unattended.

Julia and 89-year-old Henry Page, a descendant of one of Boston's first female doctors, Margaret Tate Page (Meggie as an adult), piece through letters written by Holmes to Dr. Page about the case to find out more about the murders and piece together the facts. For Julia, the driving question is if the victim is Rose, Holmes' final letter to Dr. Page, posted at the book's end, reveals that her aunt Rose survived the events, and never married.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Dahmer</span> American serial killer (1960–1994)

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killer and sex offender who killed and dismembered seventeen males between 1978 and 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts—typically all or part of the skeleton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Serial killer</span> Murderer of multiple people

A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three murders, others extend it to four or lessen it to two.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gary Ridgway</span> American serial killer (born 1949)

Gary Leon Ridgway is an American serial killer known as the Green River Killer. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders committed between the early 1980s and late 1990s. As part of his plea bargain, another conviction was added, bringing the total number of convictions to 49, making him the second most prolific serial killer in United States history according to confirmed murders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">H. H. Holmes</span> American con artist and serial killer (1861–1896)

Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes or H. H. Holmes, was an American con artist and serial killer active between 1891 and 1894. By the time of his execution in 1896, Holmes had engaged in a lengthy criminal career that included insurance fraud, forgery, swindling, three to four bigamous illegal marriages, horse theft and murder. His most notorious crimes took place in Chicago around the time of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.

The Boston Strangler is the name given to the murderer of 13 women in Greater Boston during the early 1960s. The crimes were attributed to Albert DeSalvo based on his confession, on details revealed in court during a separate case, and DNA evidence linking him to the final victim.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dennis Nilsen</span> Scottish serial killer (1945–2018)

Dennis Andrew Nilsen was a Scottish serial killer and necrophile who murdered at least twelve young men and boys between 1978 and 1983. Convicted at the Old Bailey of six counts of murder and two of attempted murder, Nilsen was sentenced to life imprisonment on 4 November 1983, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 25 years; this recommendation was later changed to a whole life tariff in December 1994. In his later years, Nilsen was imprisoned at HM Prison Full Sutton in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tess Gerritsen</span> Chinese-American novelist (born 1953)

Tess Gerritsen is the pseudonym of Terry Gerritsen, an American novelist and retired general physician.

<i>The Dante Club</i> Mystery novel by Matthew Pearl

The Dante Club is a mystery novel by Matthew Pearl and his debut work, set amidst a series of murders in the American Civil War era. It also concerns a club of poets, including such historical figures as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and James Russell Lowell, who are translating Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy from Italian into English and who notice parallels between the murders and the punishments detailed in Dante's Inferno.

"Autopsy" is a television series of HBO's America Undercover documentary series. Dr. Michael Baden, a real-life forensic pathologist, is the primary analyst, and has been personally involved in many of the cases that are reviewed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Autopsy of John F. Kennedy</span> Autopsy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy

The autopsy of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was performed at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. The autopsy began at about 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) on November 22, 1963—the day of Kennedy's assassination—and ended in the early morning of November 23, 1963. The choice of autopsy hospital in the Washington, D.C. area was made by his widow, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who chose the Bethesda as President Kennedy had been a naval officer during World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zack Addy</span> Fictional character

Zachary "Zack" Uriah Addy, Ph.D, is a fictional character in the television series Bones. The character is portrayed by Eric Millegan and was introduced as Dr. Temperance Brennan's young assistant at the beginning of the series before he received his doctorate in forensic anthropology in season 2. Millegan was a main character throughout seasons 1 to 3, appearing in all episodes. Since then, he made guest appearances in season 4, season 5, the season 11 finale, and had a recurring role in the series' final season. In the penultimate episode of the series, "The Day in the Life", Zack is exonerated for the murder that left him incarcerated at the end of season 3.

An angel of mercy or angel of death is a type of criminal offender who is usually employed as a medical practitioner or a caregiver and intentionally harms or kills people under their care. The angel of mercy is often in a position of power and may decide the victim would be better off if they no longer suffered from whatever severe illness is plaguing them. This person then uses their knowledge to kill the victim. In some cases, as time goes on, this behavior escalates to encompass the healthy and the easily treated.

"The Man in the Morgue" is the 19th episode of the first season of the television series Bones. Originally aired on April 19, 2006 on FOX network, the episode is written by Noah Hawley and Elizabeth Benjamin, and directed by James Whitmore Jr. The episode features Dr. Temperance Brennan and FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth attempting to recover Brennan's memories after she awakes covered in blood in New Orleans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colin Norris</span> Scottish serial killer

Colin Campbell Norris is a Scottish serial killer and former nurse convicted for the murder of four elderly patients and attempted to murder another in two hospitals in Leeds, England in 2002.

<i>Body Double</i> (novel) Book by Tess Gerritsen

Body Double is a 2004 novel written by Tess Gerritsen, the fourth book of the Maura Isles/Jane Rizzoli series.

Rizzoli & Isles is an American crime drama television series starring Angie Harmon as Jane Rizzoli and Sasha Alexander as Maura Isles. Based on the series of Rizzoli & Isles novels by Tess Gerritsen, the plot follows Boston Homicide police detective Jane Rizzoli and Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Maura Isles combining their experiences and strikingly different personalities to solve cases. It premiered on TNT on July 12, 2010 and aired 105 episodes in seven seasons, concluding on September 5, 2016.

<i>ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2</i> 2011 American film

ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2 is a 2011 American slasher film written and directed by Robert Green Hall, and co-written by Kevin Bocarde. It is the sequel to 2009 film Laid to Rest.

<i>The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh</i> 1971 film by Sergio Martino

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh is a 1971 giallo mystery film directed by Sergio Martino, and starring Edwige Fenech, George Hilton, Ivan Rassimov, and Alberto de Mendoza. Its plot follows the wife of a diplomat who finds herself being stalked by her former abusive lover in Vienna.

<i>Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller</i> 2012 video game

Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller is a 4-part episodic point-and-click graphic adventure game released by Phoenix Online Studios for multiple platforms. Funded through Kickstarter in 2011, four episodes were released on the PC and Mac, with the first two on the iPad. Jane Jensen, the creator of the Sierra On-Line Gabriel Knight series, was a story consultant for the development of the game.

<i>Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise</i> American TV series or program

Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise is a 2015 American made-for-television crime drama film directed by Robert Harmon and starring Tom Selleck, Mackenzie Foy, William Devane, and Luke Perry. Written by Selleck and Michael Brandman, the film is about a police chief of the (fictional) small town of Paradise, Massachusetts, who investigates the murder of the apparent fourth victim of a brutal serial killer. Filmed on location in Lunenburg and Halifax, Nova Scotia,

References