Book: The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver
Krishna
We have reviewed many earlier books in the Lincoln Rhymes series by this author so far. See reviews of The Twelfth Card or The Stone Monkey for a few samples.
If you want a simple overview : this book also has the elements we have come to know about this author, especially in this series (I admit I have not read any books of other series by this author so this may be a feature of all of his books): the twists and surprises are there; the action is there (physical action and tension; the cerebral deduction is there). Having said all that, this is not up there with the two examples above. Read more of those books to see why. Let us dive into the story.
Alice Sanderson and Arthur are playing hooky during a working day and meet in her apartment in Manhattan. She recently met him in a wine show and they clicked. This is the first time she brought him to her apartment, but is surprised to find a nagging discomfort at the back of her mind. She realizes too late that she has been carefully manipulated.
When Lincoln Rhyme is informed, he is puzzled - why is this case being brought to him if the perp has already been collared? Because, it so happens that Arthur Rhyme is a relative of the great forensic criminologist. He promises Arthur’s mother, his aunt that he will ‘look into what information he can get her’. Not anything more.
The evidence against Arthur is overwhelming. He was reputed to know the victim and was a fan of the artist whose painting was stolen. In addition, the soil on the shoes matched the ones found in Alice’s house and bloody rags - with the blood identified as the victim’s was found in his van.
It was lucky that the police got an anonymous tip off with the information that a man fitting the description of the author was seen to be exiting that building in the night with a painting in his arms.
When he looks, though, he finds a lot of anomalies. He realizes that his cousin has been framed. When he digs deep, he finds similar patterns earlier - where someone was implicated in crimes and the person clueless as to why they are being accused. More than enough evidence found by the police to make it an open and shut case and crucially, an anonymous tip off in every previous case. Lincoln’s curiosity is piqued.
Meanwhile, the person goes after another young girl - he is a man who is a data expert and has the capability to know everything about every one of his victims and the person who is to be the scapegoat. He meets the girl (after stalking her for weeks) ‘accidentally’ in a street and then pretends that he attended the same meeting she did. Disarms her and the victim is the one who had done some carpentry in her house, an ex army man called DeLeon Williams - black - with PTSD and also had some felony charges hanging against him. An anonymous phone call made, evidence planted - the meticulous plan beautifully executed.
When the killer (who is well disguised as a pillar of society working in an organization with sixteen year olds, just like his victims who are ‘sixteens’) goes there to plan an evidence against DeLeon Williams, he sees suspicious police activity (Sachs is already there) that puts him in a nervous high alert. The planting of evidence was supposed to be the final nail in the coffin of Deleon just like Arthur earlier, but something in the police presence seemed very wrong.
He ditches his bag with the evidence in a dumpster but is concerned. How did the cops find the connections and thus what kind of a person they were looking for? He decided to stay and find out. Altering his appearance, he watches the redhead try for evidence and also other police looking into dumpsters.
Sachs, who was sitting in her car, writing notes about the last place she was checking out, and is surprised by having a pistol waved in her face. It turns out that the killer had called the exact branch of cops who could have accidentally shot Sachs. She proves that she is a police officer herself before any drastic measures were initiated.
Meanwhile she goes and meets (in the apartment number that was left at the bottom of the evidence bag) the man Robert Jorgensen. He was a respected physician until his life was systematically destroyed (by the perp, as we learn later) from all the information available about him - public and private until he went stark raving mad, suspecting God to be against him. Sachs is the first person who has not totally disbelieved him and thought him a crackpot. We learn that the man was a victim on whom the perp practiced his skills of data gathering and punishing - where he honed his skills.
Amelia Sachs makes a trip with Ron Polasky to the SSD, the data mining company which keeps track of all transactions (a kind of Google or Facebook if you will, that hoovers up all data) as they think that the data mining is the source of the all-knowing nature of the criminal. They meet everyone including the confident and suave owner who believes knowledge is power and aslimy executive Sean who incidentally uses the word ‘sixteen’ to denote any private individual. This is interesting; it is meant to denote the code used in SSD for this particular entity but the killer uses it in his musings. (As always, the obvious suspect is not the real killer but what is interesting here is that this man is involved in his own side deals which comes to light incidentally during the investigation).
Looking further into the evidence, Lincoln gets a brainwave that this person is a ‘collector’ or a ‘pack rat’ and collects evidence simply for the thrill of it. A psychologist also confirms the thing.
Meanwhile the killer is puzzled how “They”, the police came close to implicating SSD. He decides it is time to kill an employee of SSD, a lower ranking colleague, and put the blame on him. He follows the man and is puzzled when the man uncharacteristically buys flowers. He is reassured only when he realizes that the man is on his way to the cemetery to lay the flowers at the grave of his dead wife and daughter - they died in an accident a few years ago. Perfect. In his framing, this will be an act of contrition and goodbye. But his plans get ruined when a graveyard keeper interrupts him and grows suspicious. He needs to be disposed off unplanned and the killer runs.
When Sachs hears of it, she runs the grid and is surprised to see movement behind the bushes where she did not expect it. She then goes to investigate but meets a police officer. Reassured, she completes the search and is stunned to hear that one of the cops had lost his cap and realizes that the killer was boldly watching her do the crime scene disguised (in the fog) as an officer with just the caps. In addition, he had addressed her by name (‘Detective Sachs’) when he had a brief conversation with her!
Lincoln gets a security expert to hack into SSD but he is unsuccessful. So he sends Ron Pulasky to collect the client data and he manages to ask for it to be shown in the system to check it out. While logged in, he collects (with the computer nerd’s assistance), the empty disk space contents - deleted files - into a zip drive.
Then Lincoln springs a trap for the killer, having Jeremy Bell as a security expert being brought in to profile the killer. An open invitation that seems to work, as the killer trails him to kill him with the police watching covertly. But there is a twist. It turns out that the real killer is onto the trap, just by looking at the metadata of the document and sending a bounty hunter instead to his place.
Meanwhile Ron Pulaski gets targeted having his wife Jenny arrested as an illegal alien, even though she has been American for generations; Lon Selitto gets suspended from the force for failing a urine test - the result was loaded with drugs. Lincoln gets his power suspended as ‘he had not paid his bills for months’ and Amelia’s car was impounded due to the fact that it was implicated in felony charges. Lincoln understands that it is the killer, cornered, declaring war using his data mastery.
Meanwhile, Ron goes for help with his friend in SSD - the compliance guy xxx and he, in turn, tries to convince Ron to drop the case. When Ron is cornered in an alley by a gun wielding xxx, he thinks that this man is the real killer, using the ID of his boss, the suspect. He tries to escape and breaks xxx’s nose in the process. But it turns out that he is a Federal agent working with SSD legitimately, and are only trying to keep SSD out of the news. Ron is arrested and delivered to Lincoln with a warning not to mess with SSD.
Meanwhile, Amelia is following up leads in an old car borrowed from Pam (her adopted girl whom she treats as a daughter) and is highly suspicious of one of the houses - a boarded up warehouse. She realizes that this could be the home of the killer (522, as they call him). She gets trapped by him before she realizes her mistake and can withdraw.
I have already commented about a unique aspect that forms the core of every Rhymes novel by Jeffrey Deaver : In the Twelfth Card, it is about card tricks, in the vanished man, it is about illusions, in Stone Monkey, it is about people smuggling into the USA. In this one, it is all about data and the Watchtower is a kind of a Google company that ‘knows everything about everyone’. It is impressive how many computer facts he gets correct - about anonymising data, for example, or the power of misuse of it. He talks of deleted files on a disk still being accessible to a skilled and knowledgeable technical expert (“geek”) and about data warehousing. Impressive!
The ending is explosively action packed. The tension is almost palpable and the ‘who and why’ parts are both interesting.
Definitely a good read, and worth the time spent on it, if you are looking for pure entertainment and a typical twisty story.
7/10
== Krishna