Status Updates From Rizzoli & Isles Series Coll...

Dental records to the rescue!

Oh, my gosh ... who were those burned bodies in the Suburban wreck if all the passengers trekked out of the wreckage (as far as we readers know)?!

Such a page turner!

A teaspoon of salt + a tablespoon of sugar + a cup of water = poor person’s version of Gatorade.

🤔

During Boston’s long winters, snow meant tiresome shoveling and wet boots and slushy streets. It was merely a fact of life that had to be dealt with until spring. But this snow [in Jackson Hole] seemed different; it was vacation snow …

Vacation snow - love the phrase!

So you just trust in the universe?

I do. And I sleep very well at night. No doubts, no closet full of anxieties. Life’s too short for that. We should just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Life lesson. 😃

I believe that every experience, every wrong decision, teaches us something. That’s why we shouldn’t be afraid to make mistakes.

😃

Yikes. Prophet Jeremiah Goode was taking 13-year-old Katie Sheldon as his bride?!

Chapter Two takes place 16 years later.

Jeremiah and the Gathering … 64 families who labored, worshipped, and (every Sabbath) broke bread together.

Calls to mind the “Criminal Minds” episode guest-starring the late Luke Perry. 😟

Anthropologists will tell you that a nuclear family is not mother, father, and child. No, it’s mother and child. Fathers come and go. They sail off to sea or they March off to war and often they don’t come home. But mother and child are linked forever. Mother and child are the primordial unit.

Ombrogenous: doesn’t get any water from streams or underground currents, so no added oxygen or nutrients; entirely rain-fed & stagnant - that makes it superacidic

🤓

Bog bodies …

Highly acidic, oxygen poor & contain layers of sphagnum moss

Help arrest decomposition & preserve soft tissues; darken skin

If allowed to steep for centuries, eventually, corpse’s bones dissolve, leaving only preserved flesh, leathery & flexible

😳

It’s almost impossible to tell, just by appearance, if a tsantsa is male or female. Shrinking the head distorts the features and makes the sexes look alike.

Motherhood didn’t make you stronger. It made you vulnerable and afraid of what death could steal from you.

“sunset the color of bruises”

How vivid!

Cult of Mithras … virgin mother, had twelve who accompanied him … part of Persian lore that sounds like Christian Gospel, but predated it by centuries!

Azazel (the Watcher, offspring of a fallen Angel + human) = “scapegoat” - he who assumes all sins, all evils of mankind.

By tradition, chosen animal is led into wilderness, taking humanity’s sins w/it. And there it’s released.

Let me guess … house in upstate NY where Sarah Parmley’s body was found belongs to Lily Saul? She’s the heiress the authorities can’t locate?

- Lilith was Adam’s first wife
- Much not written in the Bible 😳
- Ancient Hebrew legend: Lilith was the mother of Lucifer

What a coincidence.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard the Rizzoli & Isles theme song other than in episodes.

I’m reading as I wait for a softball game to start … and the opening banjo(?)/string strums of the theme song come on the ball field loudspeakers. 😃

Jane’s mother labored 34 years ago to bring her into the world. That’s what she’s thinking about as contractions hit her, preparing to deliver her and Gabriel’s child.

In the marines, we call them “torso meat tags” because they’re useful for identifying your corpse. In a blast, there’s a good chance you’d lose your extremities. So a lot of soldiers choose to get their tattoos on their chest or back.

🤔

Some casket makers sell coffins equipped with emergency transmitters to call for help. Just in case you’re buried alive.

😳

In a few weeks, there will be nothing left of her (Anja). She will vanish, just as I am about to vanish, into a land where no one knows my name. Into America.

(from Minsk, where the woman who recruited 17-year-old Mila enticed her with the prospect of a job in a dressmaker’s shop - much better than her lack of prospects in her home country 😕)

Hence, the novel’s title: Vanish. 🥺

Not sure why I’m so fixated on characters’ ages.

Anyway, Maura is ten years younger than her fifty-year-old secretary, Louise. And yet, Maura feels, Louise seems to have twice her stamina. 😃

Oooo! The catacombs of Paris! I’ve been there!