Book: The Coffin Dancer by Jeffery Deaver
Krishna
Edward Carney and his wife Percey are running a transport business, both being pilots. When her wife wakes up with a migraine one day, he arranges for another man Tim Randolph in her place to carry freight for Talbot.
Concerned for his wife as she did not pick up the phone, he perishes when his plane explodes during the descent into O’Hare.
Detectives Lon Selitto and Jerry Banks seek out Lincoln who is investigating sand. Lincoln was trying to investigate the disappearance of Tony Panelli, one of the undercover agents for Fred Dellray. Tony Panelli had brought the case to Lincoln.
They describe Hansen, an arms dealer dealing in illegal arms, covering his tracks by dumping the evidence. He is also having an accomplice, ‘the Coffin Dancer’ kill witnesses. The first one was disposed off by a plane explosion, which was piloted by Edward Carney.
Coffin Dancer is so called since a witness once saw a tattoo of a man dancing next to a coffin on the assassin’s hands but the FBI could not track that down with any tattooist they know.
When Stephen (aka the Coffin Dancer) goes to eliminate the wife who is also a witness to an event that Stephen’s sponsor is trying to cover up, he is disturbed to find the police presence, and even more disturbing, the police know to stop single white males to check. He strikes up a conversation with what he thinks is an abominable woman and goes with her through the police cordon safely with his gun in a guitar case (carried by his newfound friend).
He goes to her apartment, outside the cordon of the police and before leaving, kills her.
Meanwhile, Rhyme figures out that the bomb that killed the pilot had a bomb attached to the outside of the plane.
When Percey goes out to see the plane over the objections of the same folks, she endangers herself when Stephen is waiting for her and runs out in open view when he attacks the plan to provoke her. Jerry Banks gets critically injured in an effort to save her and Sachs is beyond furious.
Rhyme gets the trace materials collected by Sachs and his investigations are brilliant as usual. He realizes the the killer had broken a glass from the inside and then collected and dropped it on the inside to make it look like he broke in, instead of breaking out. The deduction that he came in through a key before posting the bomb on the plane – all of it brilliantly done. This is where Deaver shines!
When the dancer was surprised in another place, Lincoln right away guesses that he is planning to use a gas filled truck as a bomb to destroy the area and has everyone evacuated, just pissing off the authorities. But a phenomenal cat and mouse game follows. The dancer is almost caught by the carefully laid trap by Lincoln to lure him with a carefully placed ‘honeypot’ for the wife and the friend. When he realizes through sheer luck, he goes with a bum called Josie and leaves by an underground tunnel from the abandoned building.
Guessing that he is going to attack them when they are moved, Lincoln plans another deception. There is an escalating guessing, planning and out guessing by Lincoln and the Dancer in a phenomenal cat and mouse game. For instance, he plants explosives in a cell phone that Jodie was supposed to use to warn them but Lincoln out guesses him and plants it in a safe empty room to fool him. He outsmarts Rhymes by dressing up as a firefighter and entering the building. Amazing story, the tension is crackling and you keep turning the pages breathlessly.
Finally, Percey gets to fly her plane. The policeman Bell insists on going with her and a new pilot joins her as a copilot.
The story does not end there. Nothing seems as you would think it is. Since Stephen Call tries to get at Jodie, they take him, Percey and Bell onto a safe house but Lincoln reluctantly allows her to fly the plane to save her sinking company.
Everything goes completely bananas from there. They are in a very big secure facility but the threat comes from the most unexpected quarters. More by out-thinking the Dancer than luck, Amelia manages to brilliantly outwit and capture the Dancer. How it is done is brilliantly told. And after that the story takes another lurch when the attorney comes to arrest Lincoln for putting the police in danger and Lincoln realizes that he is going to be put across from the Dancer who desperately wants to kill him.
He out-thinks that and at the end, there is another bombshell waiting to explode in your face as to who really is the mastermind behind the whole thing. It is not the drug dealer Hansen who is trying to eliminate all the witnesses.
I know it is frustratingly vague, but trust me when I say that in each of the books, Jeffrey knows how to weave twists within twists within further twists and makes you totally gasp in astonishment. The last sixty pages or so are so thrilling that you cannot put the book down.
Oh, I know that it is fully exaggerated for fictional purposes. No one can be that good but then Sherlock Holmes or Herculie Poirot also do seemingly superhuman things. This guy manages to mix a lot of action on top of that.
Good story, taut plot and well told. What else can I say?
9/10
– – Krishna