Helen Redfern's weekly column on her female fictional faves...
Jane Rizzoli. 'Who’s she?' I hear you ask. This heroine is not as well known as some of my others. So let me introduce you to this character I only came across myself a year ago.
Jane Rizzoli is a Boston homicide detective in the Jane Rizzoli/Maura Isles series of books by Tess Gerritsen. These are hard hitting, graphic and a little gory, something I never thought I’d be interested in. I am officially a squeamish scaredy cat and could never, for example, read Stephen King. But after reading my first Tess Gerritsen book I was hooked. This partly because of the interesting and inspiring character that is Jane Rizzoli.
Jane is intelligent, insightful and as hard as nails. She’s a good cop and will not rest until she has caught the perp (that’s the perpetrator to you and me). She can be volatile and impulsive and indeed, particularly in the first book she appears in, she is initially brittle and not very likeable.
She has to work extremely hard as the only female in a male dominated homicide unit. Not only is she an outsider at work, she is also the only girl in a family of brothers. She is often the object of scorn and derision by her fellow detectives and her brothers don’t treat her much better either.
Dr. Maura Isles, a Boston Medical examiner, is a friend of Jane’s. They met on the job. Maura is the cool, calm and distant character based, in part, on the author. Jane is almost the opposite being, according to Gerritsen “hot tempered, passionate and painfully blunt.” She goes on to say, “Sometimes she infuriates me. (And infuriates my readers as well.) But one thing she never does is bore me.”
As the series of books progress we see Jane’s chip on her shoulder shrink substantially. She becomes softer and happier as her life changes. In the first book she appears in, The Surgeon, she played a secondary character that Gerritsen planned to kill off at the end. But “something stopped me … She’d grown on me. She had so much heart, she’d faced so many struggles, that to end her life there struck me as appallingly unfair. So I let her live. (And I’m damn glad I did.)”
So am I, Tess, because with Jane you have introduced me to a completely different genre of reading, one I never thought I would contemplate but has given me huge enjoyment (and has also spooked me on many occasions). For that I am incredibly grateful. Discovering Jane Rizzoli was a great reward for trying a different type of book.
Related posts: Bloodstream by Tess Gerritsen review | Roberta from The Railway Children | George Kirrin
