Girl Missing

From the bestselling author of the Rizzoli & Isles series, a revised edition of her fast-paced romantic thriller, previously published as Peggy Sue Got Murdered. The perfect bridge between Tess Gerritsen's romance novels and her thrillers.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From Tess Gerritsen, bestselling author of the Rizzoli & Isles series, her stunning first thriller! A beautiful young woman’s corpse is found dumped in a garbage-strewn alley. Now laid out in the office of medical examiner Kat Novak is an unidentified body that betrays no secrets--except for a matchbook clutched in one stiff hand, seven numbers scrawled inside. When a second victim is discovered, Kat begins to fear that a serial killer is stalking the streets, using a deadly drug to do his dirty work. The police are skeptical. The mayor won’t listen. One of the town’s most prominent citizens, with a missing daughter of his own, is also Kat’s chief suspect. As the death toll rises, Kat races to expose a deadly predator who is close enough to touch her. Praise for Tess Gerritsen “[The author] has a knack for creating great characters and mysterious plots that seem straightforward but also dazzle with complexity and twists.” --Associated Press “[Gerritsen] has an imagination that allows her to conjure up depths of human behavior so dark and frightening that she makes Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft seem like goody-two-shoes.” -- Chicago Tribune “One of the most versatile voices in thriller fiction today.” --The Providence Journal Previously published as Peggy Sue Got Murdered

Praise for Tess Gerritsen
 
“[The author] has a knack for creating great characters and mysterious plots that seem straightforward but also dazzle with complexity and twists.”—Associated Press
 
“[Gerritsen] has an imagination that allows her to conjure up depths of human behavior so dark and frightening that she makes Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft seem like goody-two-shoes.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“One of the most versatile voices in thriller fiction today.”***—The Providence Journal

Autorentext
New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen earned international acclaim for her first novel of suspense, Harvest. She introduced detective Jane Rizzoli in The Surgeon (2001) and Dr. Maura Isles in The Apprentice (2002) and has gone on to write numerous other titles in the celebrated Rizzoli & Isles series, including *The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, *and *Die Again. *Her latest novel is the standalone thriller Playing with Fire. A physician, Tess Gerritsen lives in Maine.

Zusammenfassung
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From Tess Gerritsen, bestselling author of the Rizzoli & Isles series, her stunning first thriller! Previously published as Peggy Sue Got Murdered
**
“Gerritsen has a knack for creating great characters and mysterious plots that seem straightforward but also dazzle with complexity and twists.”—Associated Press
**
A beautiful young woman’s corpse is found dumped in a garbage-strewn alley. Now laid out in the office of medical examiner Kat Novak is an unidentified body that betrays no secrets—except for a matchbook clutched in one stiff hand, seven numbers scrawled inside. When a second victim is discovered, Kat begins to fear that a serial killer is stalking the streets, using a deadly drug to do his dirty work. The police are skeptical. The mayor won’t listen. One of the town’s most prominent citizens, with a missing daughter of his own, is also Kat’s chief suspect. As the death toll rises, Kat races to expose a deadly predator who is close enough to touch her.
 
“[Gerritsen] has an imagination that allows her to conjure up depths of human behavior so dark and frightening that she makes Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft seem like goody-two-shoes.”—Chicago Tribune

Leseprobe
9780345549624|excerpt

Gerritsen / GIRL MISSING

1

An hour before her shift started, an  hour before she was even supposed to be there, they rolled the first corpse through the door.

Up until that moment, Kat Novak’s day had been going better than usual. Her car had started on the first turn of the key. Traffic had been sparse on Telegraph, and she’d hit all the green lights. She’d managed to slip into her office at five to seven, and for the next hour she could lounge guiltlessly at her desk with a jelly doughnut and today’s edition of the Albion Herald. She made a point of skipping the obituaries. Chances were she already knew all about them.

Then a gurney with a black body bag rolled past her doorway. Oh Lord, she thought. In about thirty seconds Clark was going to knock at her door, asking for favors. With a sense of dread, Kat listened to the gurney wheels grind down the hall. She heard the autopsy room doors whisk open and shut, heard the distant rumble of male voices. She counted ten seconds, fifteen. And there it was, just as she’d anticipated: the sound of Clark’s Reeboks squeaking across the linoleum floor.

He appeared in her doorway. “Morning, Kat,” he said.

She sighed. “Good morning, Clark.”

“Can you believe it? They just wheeled one in.”

“Yeah, the nerve of them.”

“It’s already seven ten,” he said. A note of pleading crept into his voice. “If you could just do me this favor . . .”

“But I’m not here.” She licked a dollop of raspberry jelly from her fingers. “Until eight o’clock, I’m nothing more than a figment of your imagination.”

“I don’t have time to process this one. Beth’s got the kids packed and ready to take off, and here I am, stuck with another Jane Doe. Have a heart.”

“This is the third time this month.”

“But I’ve got a family. They expect me to spend time with them. You’re a free agent.”

“Right. I’m a divorcee, not a temp.”

Clark shuffled into her office and leaned his ample behind against her desk. “Just this once. Beth and I, we’re having problems, you know, and I want this vacation to start off right. I’ll return the favor sometime. I promise.”

Sighing, Kat folded up the Herald. “Okay,” she said. “What’ve you got?”

Clark was already pulling off his white coat, visibly shifting to vacation mode. “Jane Doe. No obvious trauma. Another body-fluid special. Sykes and Ratchet are in there with her.”

“They bring her in?”

“Yeah. So you’ll have a decent police report to work with.”

Kat rose to her feet and brushed powdered sugar off her scrub pants. “You owe me,” she said as they headed into the hall.

“I know, I know.” He stopped at his office and grabbed his jacket—a fly fisherman’s version, complete with a zillion pockets with little feathers poking out.

“Leave a few trout for the rest of us.”

He grinned and gave her a salute. “Into the wilds of Maine I go,” he said, heading for the elevator. “See you next week.”

Feeling resigned, Kat pushed open the door to the autopsy room and went in.

The body, still sealed in its black bag, lay on the slab. Sergeant Lou Sykes and Detective Vince Ratchet, veterans of the local knife and gun club, were waiting for her. Sykes looked dapper as usual in a suit and tie&mda…