I enjoyed this, but safe to say it's my least favourite thus far. A lot of it is that I'm just fed up with the levels of rape and related abuse of women in this series. This time it's sex slavery, including the rape and murder of a young girl, and I see the interest value in having the two main investigators of these crimes be women themselves, but I feel like Gerritsen's scraping the bottom of this particular well. Time to move onto another type of victim already. Also - and I feel like this may not be valid, given the author's a doctor and I'm not, and also I've never given birth, so there's that - Rizzoli has her baby, and mere days later is running round investigating, and there's nary a word about her physical condition. I remember in the last book, the autopsy of one of the murder victims noted the state of the menstrual pad she was wearing. There's no such detail given to Rizzoli. It's as if all immediate physical effects of birth vanished as soon as the baby was out. There's one part where she expresses milk, true, and she's tired, but even a mention of general physical discomfort? Nothing. As I said, no first-hand or professional experience to draw on here, but the gap was notable... especially as the bodies of female victims are always examined so closely. I don't know whether it's a comment on agency or not, or a more general reluctance to conflate investigator with investigated, but it did strike me as odd.

I continue to enjoy the main characters, though. Not so much of Isles in this one, but the two of them seem to balance out over the series.