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The death of Taryn Moore, a senior at Boston's Commonwealth University, whose shattered corpse is found on the street outside her apartment building, drives this so-so thriller from bestseller Gerritsen (the Rizzoli & Isles series) and Braver (Tunnel Vision). When Boston PD Det. Frankie Loomis investigates, her partner concludes that Taryn jumped, but Frankie is less sure, and her instincts are validated by an autopsy that suggests Taryn was injured before she fell from her fifth-floor residence. The police probe alternates with flashbacks that support both the possibility of suicide and of homicide. After Taryn is dumped by her boyfriend, she responds by sleeping with her married literature professor, who's teaching a seminar on star-crossed lovers and has been accused of inappropriate behavior toward a female student. Implausibly, a distinguished scholar asks Taryn to coauthor a paper after a brief conversation, and her application to the doctoral program is so strong that the graduate committee waives "the deadline requirement." The characters are tissue-thin, and the telegraphed ending won't surprise most readers. These authors have done better on their own. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (July)

In their first collaboration, veterans Gerritsen and Braver unfold a painful, and painfully familiar, fable of adultery and its fatal consequences. The tale begins with the death of one of its principals: Commonwealth University senior Taryn Moore, whose ruined body is found on the sidewalk five floors beneath her Boston apartment. Detective Frances Loomis, who catches the case, wonders why Taryn, a beautiful, accomplished student who worked her way up from her mother's hardscrabble Maine household to be offered admission to Commonwealth, would have ended her life. Apart from some backbiting by jealous students, the only flaw Frankie can find in Taryn's litany of accomplishments is her recent breakup with Liam Reilly, the hometown boyfriend who'd joined her at Commonwealth. A series of alternating chapters, however, gradually reveal the grand passion in Taryn's life: her attachment to professor Jack Dorian, whose course in star-crossed lovers she's internalized to a dangerous degree. Even as she's pressing worshipful fellow student Cody Atwood to shadow Liam and tell her what he's been up to (no bombshells there), Taryn's falling under the spell of her charismatic teacher, who's feeling neglected because of the long hours his wife spends at Mount Auburn Hospital. The revelation that both his wife and his student are pregnant sends Jack spiraling into despair just as Frankie, back in the present, is absorbing the same news in the context of Taryn's death. The fate of this modern-day Heloise and Abelard unfolds with minimum surprise but maximum impact. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.