Rizzoli & Isles, In Their Own Words …

JANE RIZZOLI
Detective, homicide unit, Boston Police Department

I’m just a girl from Boston who hunts monsters for a living. Yeah, I know I’m not supposed to call ’em that, but that’s what some of them are. Monsters. If you saw what they’ve done, the lives they’ve ruined, you’d want to take them down, too.

I’ve wanted to be a cop since a police officer came to my school for career day. I saw how the other kids looked up to him, and I knew that was the job for me. I wanted the gun, the badge.

Most of all, I wanted the respect.

Felt like I didn’t get a lot of that when I was growing up. My mom’s a housewife and my dad’s a plumber—we’re blue collar all the way. I had an okay childhood, but I have to admit we were a noisy household. Lots of yelling.

After my training at Boston PD academy, I worked my way up from beat patrolman to detective (vice and narcotics) and finally ended up where I am now: the homicide unit. It’s a boy’s club. I get it.

Still, it gets old, having to prove myself again and again. I hate whiners, so you’ll never hear me complain. Whining doesn’t get you anywhere, not with the guys in my unit. Not with guys anywhere, for that matter.

My philosophy for success? Make every perp hunt personal. Get angry, never give up, and for god’s sake, wear flats to a scene. You’ll never catch anyone if you’re wearing high heels.

DR. MAURA ISLES
Forensic pathologist, Medical Examiner’s office, Commonwealth of Massachusetts

I want to believe that there is a scientific explanation for everything that happens. It isn’t fate that sends a bicyclist flying over the handlebars to her death; it’s because her front tire hit a frost heave and kinetic energy took over. Fate has nothing to do with it. Death is not a mystical process; it is organic. I find that comforting.

I knew, from an early age, that I was something of an odd duck. I was the child who hid out in her room for hours, reading, the child who dissected her dead pet mouse. I was the scholar, the accomplished pianist, the honor student. My parents understood that I was different, and although they were not people who’d crow loudly about anything, I always knew they were proud of me.

My devotion to logic and science drew me to the study of medicine. But soon after I began medical school, I realized that I wasn’t meant to work with living patients. I wasn’t good at holding their hands, at ferreting out the unspoken emotional clues in their voices when they told me of their aches and pains. I can analyze x-rays and blood chemistries, I can slice open muscles and organs, but I possess no scalpel with which to dissect human emotions.

So I became a forensic pathologist.

Boston is my home now. These cold New England winters suit me, as does my job as medical examiner. But I have little in common with the Boston PD detectives with whom I work. I think some of them may even be afraid of me, because I see their wary glances and hear their whispers as I walk past. And I know what they call me behind my back:

“The Queen of the Dead.”