A Review: The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver

Hardcover: 421 pages
Language: English
Publisher: Penguin Group USA Mar 1997
ISBN-10: 067086871X
ISBN-13: 9780670868711




The first in the Lincoln Rhyme series, The Bone Collector is about a forensic scientist, known to his peers as "the world's foremost criminalist". Injured during a crime scene search, Rhyme is a quadriplegic, confined to a bed in his Manhattan apartment, and cared for by his aide, Thom. He has limited use of the ring finger of his left hand, which he uses to operate some state of the art equipment that enables him to view evidence and assists him in solving crimes.

New York City is experiencing a series of gruesome kidnappings and murders, the first of which is a man buried alive on a train track with his forearm sticking out of the ground. He is discovered by NYPD cop, Amelia Sachs, who stops a train and closes a busy NYC street in order to preserve the crime scene. When Rhyme is asked to assist in the solving the case, he wants Sachs to act as his legs at the crime scenes.

The villain, a serial killer who models his crimes on ones he finds in a book on criminal life in old New York, dispenses of his victims in ways guaranteed to make you cringe. All this takes place in the course of one weekend as the killer leaves clues as to where he's going to strike next.

There is drama and suspense on every page, up to and including the climactic battle to the death at the end.

Synopsis (from the author's website)

Lincoln Rhyme, ex-head of NYPD forensics, was the nation's foremost criminalist, the man who could work a crime scene and come away with a perfect profile of the killer, frozen in time. Now, Lincoln is frozen in place — permanently. An accident on the job left him a quadriplegic who can move just one finger, a great mind strapped to his bed, mulish and sarcastic, hiding from a life he no longer wants to live.

Until he sees the crime-scene report about a corpse found buried on a deserted West Side railroad track, its bloody hand rising from the dirt. It belonged to a man who got into a cab at the airport and never got out. Reluctantly, Lincoln Rhyme abandons retirement to track down a killer whose ingenious clues hold the secret to saving his victims — if Rhyme can decipher them in time. The search leads him to the Bone Collector, whose obsession with old New York colors every scrap of evidence he leaves for Rhyme and his new partner, Amelia Sachs, whom he drafts as his arms and legs. But she's never worked a crime scene in her life — and he can only whisper in her ear as she does the exacting work he loved more than anything else.

A Review: Shallow Graves by Jeffery Deaver

Paperback: 333 pages
Language: English
Publisher: Pocket Books Sep 2000
ISBN-10: 0671047485
ISBN-13: 9780671047481




I found some time to read while I was on vacation...Shallow Graves was one I read on the plane. Shallow Graves is the first in the John Pellam series.

Pellam is a location scout in the film business. In this first novel, he is in upstate New York. I enjoyed this because the location where he is scouting is only about a half hour from where I live. I wasn't really fond of Pellam...he seemed rather cynical and arrogant and he wasn't too particular about the marital status of the women he was interested in, or about being faithful to the girlfriend back in California. However, I warmed to him as the story progressed.

Pellam is scouting in a small town that, on first observation, appears to be a typical small town with typical small town people. It doesn't take long for Pellam to realize that there is a sinister side to the town and that he is not wanted there. The more certain townspeople try to get rid of him, the more determined he is to stay.

All in all, the book isn't Deaver's best, but it's not the worst book I every read. The characters were all rather shallow and very few of them were even likable. The plot was unoriginal, and although it won't bore you to distraction, it won't raise your blood pressure either.

Synopsis (from the author's website)

Location scouting is to the film business what Switzerland is to war. John Pellam had been in the trenches of film making, with a promising Hollywood career — until a tragedy sidetracked him. Now he's a location scout, who travels the country in search of shooting sites for films.

When he rides down Main Street, locals usually clamor for their chance at fifteen minutes of fame. But in a small town in upstate New York, Pellam experiences a very different reception — his illusionary world is shattered by a savage murder, and Pellam is suddenly center stage in an unfolding drama of violence, lust, and conspiracy, which have a stranglehold on this less-than-picture-perfect locale.

A Review: The Cold Moon by Jeffery Deaver

Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
Language: English
ISBN : 0743260937 2006-05-30
EAN : 9780743260930




Although this book is one in the Lincoln Rhyme series, it introduces us to Kathryn Dance, the character in a new series by Deaver, beginning with The Sleeping Doll. Thus, the book is listed under the 2009 First in Series challenge.

Kathryn is is an agent with the California Bureau of Investigation, which is a bit like a state version of the FBI. She's operating out of their fictional Monterey, California, office. A young widow, whose FBI agent husband died several years ago, and the mother of two children, she's operating out of their fictional Monterey, California office.

Kathryn's law enforcement specialty is one I find quite fascinating. She's an expert at kinesics (body language) and more broadly in interrogation and interviewing witnesses and suspects. She is brought into the investigation of a series of gruesome murders in New York City, and although Rhyme is skeptical about her techniques, he eventually forms an alliance with her and asks that she stay to see the investigation through to the end.

Description (from the author's website)

Lincoln Rhyme returns in The Cold Moon, a roller coaster of a thriller that pits Lincoln and Amelia Sachs against time itself.

On a freezing December night, with a full moon hovering in the black skies over New York City, two people are brutally murdered—their prolonged deaths marked by eerie calling-cards: moon-faced clocks ticking away the victims' last minutes on earth. More murders are planned, and Rhyme and his team have only hours to stop the icy-cold, brilliant Watchmaker, whose obsession with time drives him to plan his carnage with the precision of a fine timepiece. While the cat-and-mouse search for the killer proceeds, Amelia Sachs must balance her efforts to catch the Watchmaker with her job as lead detective on the first homicide case of her own, in which she unearths shocking revelations from the past that threaten to undermine her very relationship with Lincoln Rhyme.

An unlikely ally appears on the scene in the form of California Bureau of Investigation special agent Kathryn Dance, one of the nation's leading experts in interrogation and kinesics—body language. Despite Lincoln's skepticism about witnesses, and her distrust of physical evidence, the two form a curious alliance in the heart-stopping quest to find the Watchmaker.

The rest of the team is present too—tech-minded Mel Cooper, dogged Lon Sellitto, hip Fred Dellray, and the newest addition: rookie Ron Pulaski.

Deaver's lightning-fast prose keeps the two cases racing along in almost real time, with more plot twists and surprises than in any previous book of his, as we realize that the Watchmaker may not be simply a murderous lunatic, but a far more cunning villain than anyone could guess, and the most terrifying and mesmerizing bad guy to ever come from the mind of Jeffery Deaver.

Reviews:

Bestseller Deaver's twisty seventh Lincoln Rhyme novel pits Rhyme, the quadriplegic NYPD detective, against a brilliant criminal mastermind called the Watchmaker. Assisted by his longtime partner, Det. Amelia Sachs, an expert at forensic analysis, Rhyme probes two bizarre murders linked by the killer's calling card—a clock left at the scene. The Watchmaker, as an ominous poem also left at the scene suggests, is bent on executing eight more people in a variety of ways intended to prolong their suffering. Deaver cleverly alternates between the Rhyme/Sachs team and the Watchmaker and his assistant, heightening tension by introducing the next targets and humanizing them. Sachs loses some focus when she also has to probe a suicide that she suspects is connected with some corrupt brother officers. Deaver fans won't be surprised that the investigations overlap, or that the several apparent climaxes are building to something more, but even they will be hard-pressed to peel back all the layers of the cunning plot at work beneath the surface.
— Publishers Weekly

A Review: Speaking in Tongues by Jeffery Deaver

Hardcover: 333 pages
Publisher: Highbridge Co Dec 2000
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0684871262
ISBN-13: 9780684871264



Although I liked this book, it isn't one of his best. The characters lack the dimension of other Deaver characters such as Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs. Deaver weaves his usual complex web of suspense with plenty of twists and turns to keep you turning the page.

I didn't care at first for Tate Collier or his ex-wife Bett, the parents of a kidnapped teenage girl. Tate considered Megan to be an "inconvenient child" and Bett was more interested in her looks and her love life than caring for her daughter. Megan's emotional issues were completely ignored by both her parents as she filled the void left by their neglect with alcohol and sex. The self-centeredness of these parents really put me off. But as the story evolved, I saw a change in Tate's and Bett's attitudes toward Megan. They risked a lot in their attempts to track down Megan's kidnapper and save her. However, with all of the attempts made by Tate and Bett, it's Megan who is the real hero of this story.

All in all, a good read with a satisfying ending.

Description (from the author's website)

Tate Collier, once one of the country's finest trial lawyers, is trying to forget his past. Now a divorced gentleman farmer, land developer, and community advocate in rural Virginia, he's regrouping from some disastrous mistakes in the realms of love and the law. But controversy — and danger — seem to have an unerring hold on Tate. Even as he struggles to rebuild his life, his alter ego is plotting his demise.

Aaron Matthews, a brilliant psychologist, has turned his talents away from curing patients to far deadlier goals. He's targeted Tate, Tate's ex-wife, Bett, and their estranged daughter, Megan, for unspeakable revenge. Matthews, ruthless and hell-bent, will destroy anything that inhibits his plans. When their daughter disappears, Tate and Bett reunite in a desperate, heart-pounding attempt to find her and to stop Matthews, a psychopath whose gift of a glib tongue and talent for coercion are as dangerous as knives and guns. Featuring an urgent race against the clock, gripping details of psychological manipulation, and the brilliant twists and turns that are trademark Deaver.

A Review: The Stone Monkey by Jeffery Deaver

Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (March 12, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0743221990
ASIN: B00011SOXI



The Stone Monkey is the fourth book in the Lincoln Rhyme series, the first three being The Bone Collector, The Coffin dancer and The Empty Chair. Rhyme is brilliant forensic scientist who happens to be a quadriplegic. Along with a team of law enforcement personnel and his partner and lover, Amelia Sachs, he is working to apprehend a murderous human smuggler. Amelia has a talent for finding evidence and acts as Rhyme's legs as she "walks the grid" at crime scenes.

When a vicious smuggler known as the Ghost blows up a ship filled with undocumented Chinese immigrants less than a mile from New York harbor, only a handful of survivors--and the Ghost himself--manage to escape the burning vessel. Rhyme and Amelia must stop the Ghost before he murders the two families who made it to shore. The families have gone to ground in the all but impenetrable world of Manhattan's Chinatown, a fact that makes the pair's two allies--Sonny Li, a Chinese cop, and Dr. John Sung-- invaluable partners.

Description (from the author's website)

Recruited to help the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service perform the nearly impossible, Lincoln Rhyme and his partner, Amelia Sachs, manage to track down a cargo ship headed for New York City carrying two dozen illegal Chinese immigrants, as well as the notorious human smuggler and killer known as "the Ghost."

But when the Ghost's capture goes disastrously wrong, Lincoln and Amelia find themselves in a race against time: to stop the Ghost before he can track down and murder the two surviving families who have escaped from the ship and vanished deep into the labyrinthine world of New York City's Chinese community.

Over the next harrowing forty-eight hours, the Ghost brilliantly and ruthlessly hunts for the families, while Rhyme, aided by a quirky policeman from mainland China, struggles to find them before they die, and Amelia Sachs pursues a very different kind of police work — forming a connection with one of the immigrants that may affect her relationship with her partner and lover, Lincoln Rhyme.