Copyright 2016 by Gunner Publications LLC. Published by Grand Central Publishing, New York.
I like Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme books (this is 12 in a series of 14). Some of the puzzles that he has to unravel are among the most intricate – and perverted – of all the mysteries that I have read. His villains are among the most cunning, savage and brutal. I usually can’t put the book down.
I put this one down. Frequently.
A little background for those not familiar with Lincoln Rhyme. He is a quadriplegic, a former captain in the NYPD whose spinal cord was damaged beyond repair while working a crime scene. Since that time he has worked as a consultant to the NYPD, solving some of their knottiest cases. He is ably assisted by Amelia Sachs, an active NYPD detective and lover who is engaged to Rhyme. There are several other active NYPD detectives who assist. It is a formidable crew, dedicated to solving the crime(s) through thorough analysis of meager trace evidence.
The Rhyme books are not classic whodunnits – we know who the culprit is (mostly). He even gets his own first person narrative in parts of this book. The mystery is the motive and how he will be caught.
This book is complex in that no fewer than 4 – or is it 5 – separate stories are intertwined. The unsub – he is actually called “Unsub 40” through much of the book – is a tall, rail-thin man who is suspected of several heinous crimes. Sachs is hot on his trail at the inception, only to be thwarted as she closes in on her prey as he is eating lunch in a shopping mall by the intervention of a horrible accident – a man falls into the workings of an escalator and is chewed to death as Sachs tries to save him. But we soon learn that it wasn’t an accident – someone hacked the wireless controller embedded in the escalator, causing the cover plate on the gearbox to open while operating. I don’t think it will spoil much if I tell you that the hacker is Unsub 40 and he popped the cover while having lunch.
Lincoln, who in this book has terminated his work with the NYPD, takes on a task for the lawyer representing the wife of the chewed-up shopper. Eventually Sachs and Rhyme figure out they are dealing with the same perp and join forces. But there are still other subplots: the appearance of Sach’s old flame, an ex-cop who was sent upriver for a truck hijacking that he now claims he didn’t do, a drug dealer that another detective is trying to nail because he thinks it will get Lincoln working for NYPD again, and the actions of the unsub’s mysterious and somewhat pathetic girlfriend. It is all pretty confusing. It all comes together at the end, but you have to embark on a torturous ride to get there.
There are plot twists. Lots of plot twists. But, more than any other Lincoln Rhyme book, this one seemed to rely less on evidence and more on dumb luck and conclusions based on very thin evidence. The reader is asked to buy into some fairly far-fetched wrinkles in the plot. I didn’t buy into them and so had a hard time getting through to the end. It felt like a slog in some very thick quicksand.
5 out of 10.