re:mote voices

Title:Vanish
Author:Tess Gerritsen
Publisher:Bantam

When the Medical Examiner hears a noise in the mortuary she goes to investigate. There she is alarmed to find a woman in a body bag, waiting autopsy, who while not in great condition is in fact alive. The Jane Doe is taken to the hospital for emergency medical attention. When the mystery woman awakes she grabs a security guard’s gun and takes a handful of hostages. One of whom is a pregnant police officer about to give birth any minute.

Which covers the start of Tess Gerritsen’s Vanish as far as described by the book’s cover notes. With human trafficking, mystery gunmen, government conspiracy, and the obligatory terrorism references quickly cropping up, a novel that could have been a taut thriller set in a hospital, becomes something of an unwieldy slab, that doesn’t seem entirely sure of where it is going. Certainly Vanish is readable enough, a trashy novel where the pages just keep turning without the requirement for much thought. There isn’t anything especially memorable to the mish-mash of recycled generic ideas and there is an awareness throughout of the baggage that comes from characters firmly entrenched in an author’s series.