UNION — Despite inclement weather, last Friday night a capacity crowd filled the Vose Library in Union to hear best-selling author Tess Gerritsen read from her new book, Die Again, which is to be released in December. Gerritsen was candid, humorous, and friendly throughout the question and answer period, taking the time to thoughtfully respond to her immediate audience.

“Thank you all for coming out tonight,” she said. “I know you all expect to hear me read from my new book that’s coming out in December. I have a little bit of a quandary as to what to read from it. One of the sections, my husband said don’t read that. It’s a graphic stomach-turning section and he said don’t read that, so I’m not going to read it. I’m going to read a section that’s more toward the beginning of the book, but it gets you more in the mood for the book.

“Usually my books start with something that has scared me. With this particular book, it all happened while I was on safari in Africa. Any of you who have been on safari know that they tell you, don’t get out of the jeep. The cardinal rule is don’t get out of the jeep.

“Most of these vehicles have no cover, no doors, and if lions wanted to kill you all they have to do is jump in, but they don’t. They don’t because they identify the jeep as one big animal, so they don’t attack. But if you get out of the jeep they see you’re separate and that’s when you get into trouble. A couple of months before we got to Africa our guide said there were some Chinese tourists and they didn’t understand the instructions and they got out of the jeep and they were killed.”

Gerritsen said the group’s own encounter was with a leopard while they were out of the jeep.

“That experience told me that you are in a very dangerous place and everywhere you go in the African bush there are these things that can kill you. And the only thing that keeps you alive is your ranger, the guy that’s hired to protect you. I was thinking that we are really lucky that this man is here to protect us. And then the writer’s mind kicks in.

“The writer’s mind is always thinking, what’s the worst that can happen? What I thought was, my God, what if… he’s not who he told us he was. You fly into the bush and land at this remote airstrip and this guy shows up in this jeep to pick you up. You don’t know who he is. You’ve never met him before. What if he killed the real ranger? He’s there to take out his next group of… gazelles. He’s actually a hunter and comes to Africa for his big game hunts. And his big game hunts involve people he’s picked up at the airstrip. So, that’s what got me started on this whole idea of a thriller that takes place largely in Africa.

“The story is about a group of tourists who fly in from all over the world. They go to Botswana and they’re picked up at the airstrip. They go off into the bush and they’re never seen again. Then six years later there are murders that happen in Boston. Jane Rizzoli is following the clues and she realizes that the clues lead her back to this missing safari group that disappeared in Botswana and that this is all linked together and she has to go to Africa to find someone who will help her figure out what the answer is.

“That’s the background of where this story comes from and I know you think you know who the bad guy is, but you know I always trick you. So, the part I’m going to read is pretty much from the beginning of the book and it takes place in Botswana where all these tourists have just flown in. They've been in the bush a couple of days.

(Reader: play the video here).

“I’m going to backtrack here for any of you who haven’t read any of my books and don’t know what the background is. This will be number 11 in the Rizzoli and Isles series. People always want to know how that started and did I always plan to write a series. So, I’m going to tell you where Jane Rizzoli came from.

“I had been writing medical thrillers and I was on this interesting book tour for a book called Gravity. I was talking to some readers and one of the women stood up and she said, ‘I’m not interested in the space program,’ which is what my book was about. She said, ‘I want you to write a book about something I am interested in.’

“I asked her what that would be. And she said, ‘serial killers and twisted sex.’ She was a normal looking woman. I asked her what she did for a living because out of curiosity, what kind of a person wants books about serial killers and twisted sex. And she said I teach… the third grade. I went home thinking, OK, third grade teachers obviously have an imagination I wasn’t aware of.

“I asked my readers, how many of you like books about serial killers. I’d never written a book about serial killers until then. And I got a lot of responses that people love these books. Especially my female readers all said, we love these books, but, we only want to read these books if the victims in your stories are women. And I asked what if the victims are men, and they said, we don’t care about those. So I decided to write a book about serial killers and twisted sex, but what do I do to make it different, to stand out among all these other serial killer books.

“And I thought, OK I’m a doctor, there’s something medical that I need to use here. What freaks me out about medicine? As a doctor what is something that disturbs me, what disturbs all of us. And whether you’re a doctor or a nurse or anybody, it’s blood. Blood has this alarming color. If you see blood, you know something’s wrong. So I thought, OK, I’m going to do something with blood.

“I thought blood tests. When you go to your doctor and you get your blood drawn, and they get that little tube of blood and they send it off, ever wonder about all the secrets that is in that blood and who has access to those secrets. Blood can tell if you’ve smoked a cigarette, if you have diabetes, if you’re pregnant, things that you might not want people to know.

“Now there’s somebody sitting in a lab somewhere and he’s getting all these tubes of blood from various doctor’s offices. He has your tube and there’s something that makes him decide that you’re going to be his next victim. This is an idea of people who deal with our blood in the medical system. And you know what, if they’re working in a lab, they have access in a lot of ways to your patient information.

“They know where you live, they know if you’re single, they know how old you are and they can find you. That was the genesis of where the book, The Surgeon, came about. It’s about a serial killer who has twisted sex and he finds his victims through their blood. And because this blood is coming in from doctor’s offices from all over the city, the cops are having a really hard time figuring out what the common denominator is of all these victims, all over town. The surgeon is actually the name they give to this killer because of what he does to his victims.

“I introduce a minor character in that story. She was supposed to die in this book and her name is Jane Rizzoli. She was a partner of the hero and as soon as she walks in on that first scene, nobody likes her. Everybody dislikes Jane in the very first scene. I thought, I don’t have to make her likable because I’m going to kill her.

“The thing about Jane is that she’s not attractive. She’s kind of messy. She’s very smart, but she resents the fact that men don’t pay attention to her because she’s not attractive. They always overlook her and look at all the gorgeous women in the room. Jane has to work harder then anyone else, she has to prove herself, she’s got a chip on her shoulder and she’s mad about men all the time. She grew up with two really mean brothers.

“I get to the point where Jane is going to die, and I get to that scene and I realize that I can’t do it. I’ve learned to respect this woman, she’s worked so hard, she’s the one who actually cracks the case, I can’t kill her. She survives and I wonder, you know, there’s something that makes me wonder what’s going to happen to you next. Because you turned out to be a much more powerful character then I realized.

“The other major character in that story is the villain. I’ll just call him the surgeon. I thought it was weird. I felt he was vivid from the moment he set foot on the page. I knew how he thought, how he spoke, what his interests were. And in the course of a year with living with this serial killer in my head, I almost felt like he was a real person. I felt like if I walked down the street sand saw him, I would recognize him.

“I called my editor and said the surgeon wants another book, he’s not finished yet and she said great, we want another sequel. That’s how I wound up writing The Apprentice. In The Apprentice I wind up introducing a character named Maura Isles. People ask where did Maura Isles come from?

“She was again a minor throwaway character. She was introduced purely to fulfill an auction. Every so often I’ll auction off the right to name a character. Somebody got the winning bid and they said would you please name it after my relative Dr. Maura Isles. So I introduce Dr. Maura Isles into The Apprentice and I wanted to know more about her, because she seemed very mysterious to me. And that’s why I wrote the third book in the series and all of a sudden I have a series. I never planned it and like every book it’s like what happens to these women next.

“About four or five books into the series I get a phone call from a producer in Hollywood. He said I’ve been reading your books, I love your girl, I think they belong on TV. And he took an option out for the television rights. I cashed the check, it was fine and I didn’t think about it anymore because I’ve sold movie rights to a lot of my books and nothing ever happens. It’s like the option expires and nobody ever does anything with them.

“A year later he calls me back and to my surprise he renews the option and that’s never happened before. A few months after that he said we have a great script, TNT is interested and we’re going to try and cast the part of Jane Rizzoli. I described what Jane looks to you. She’s not attractive, she’s kind of short, and she’s kind of scruffy, the men ignore her and he said; it’s Angie Harmon.

“I thought there goes the most important part of Jane’s personality and that’s that men ignore her, that’s not going to happen, but Angie turns out to have just the right kind of personality. She has that Jane spirit.

“They cast Maura Isles after a screen test. They brought in all these actors to read against Angie, and apparently when Sasha Alexander did her screen test, they said the chemistry was immediate and they never do this, but they offered her the job at that same time. So that’s how we wound up with a blond Laura, because of chemistry on screen and the two actually looking like they could be best friends.

“They’re finishing up the fifth season and I believe there are negotiations with the stars for season six and seven. The big deal about it is, is that next year Rizzoli & Isles is going to be syndicated from cable TV to broadcast TV, so you’ll see reruns of it on weekends on CBS. I’m just thrilled about the fact that it is so popular, because that sells books. People always ask me what I have to do with the show; I have nothing to do with the show. I watch it, but they have their own team of writers and their writers take the show in whatever direction they want. It’s a really popular show. You can’t argue with success.”

Coming up Friday, Oct. 31, from five to 7 p.m. at the Vose Library is Trunk or treat. All you do is decorate the trunk of your car, get some treats to hand out and go to the Vose Library. Kids will trick or treat your car. The Vose Library will provide a snack and cider before continuing on with their Halloween festivities.