The Mephisto Club by Tess GerritsenMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Okay, it’s a work of fiction, but I love it when a novel tweaks your preconceptions. And “The Mephisto Club” did just that.
Maura and Jane are simmering in a seething cauldron of evil. Well, simmering might not be the precise word, it’s more like the devil’s pot is boiling and they’re tangled up inside with a knot of slithering, poisonous vipers.
The book begins at a fairly routine murder scene but a rapid descent into Hell’s pit of death and mayhem keeps the reader engaged and guessing. Is the “Club” purely the researchers of the dark underworld of evil they claim to be, the victim, or the murderer?
Is the evil one really “like a prowling lion looking for someone to devour” or is the teaching that evil radiates out from a fallen angel simply a myth to give mankind someone to blame for his own malicious nature? With believable precision, Tess takes us into ancient manuscripts, both biblical and apocryphal, to lay out the basis for the book. It forced me to pull out my own Bible to see if she was on track and was shocked to see she was.
Maura and Jane, by now in the series, have taken on strong and authentic personalities, and this book does not disappoint or fail to build on previous offerings. The settings are graphically painted so the reader will feel both the frigid chill of the New England winter (where are my gloves and scarf) and the frozen terror of the malevolent scenes of death (I had to keep looking over my shoulder).
Mystery, body parts, pools of blood, and a heavy dose of what sounds like the flutter of bat wings, makes this a great read.
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