Book: The Stone Monkey by Jefferey Deaver
Krishna
I will admit an embarrassing fact for a supposedly impartial reviewer or books. I am a fan of this extremely talented writer. He writes like no other forensic fiction author. Starting with The Empty Chair (which is not his first), I fell into his spell of hypnotic storytelling with twists and turns. See the earlier reviews of The Bone Collector and The Coffin Dancer for a sample.
Granted, this is dramatic and a mix of adventure, twists, and deductions and therefore, I will not call it realistic fiction. But what he sets out to do, the creator of Lincoln Rhyme, the fictional detective (or criminologist, as he likes to call himself) does very well.
When a people smuggling boat is intercepted by the FBI and INS of the US, the master smuggler sets off a pre-planted bomb, sinking the ship. The man has been wanted by the police for a long time but is so elusive that he is called The Ghost. (His name is Kwan Ang, with a nickname of Gui, meaning ‘ghost’)
The captain Sen Zi-un realizes that the INS is homing in on him and try to change plans to just drop the passengers in a raft a bit farther from the shore and turn away. However, he realizes that it is a bit too late. Ghost is on the ship and has no intentions of being caught, no matter the cost in lives it takes to achieve his aim
Sam Chang is the only immigrant (‘piglet’ in the Ghost’s contemptuous slang) who would even talk to the captain.
They cannot figure out how the Coast Guard were on to them. At the other end, Lincoln Rhymes is almost sure they got the Ghost and Amelia Sachs is waiting at the shore to get them when they land. They are sure that they have got Ghost at last. It was Lincoln Rhymes who figured out where the boat would be coming from and set up the trap to intercept it, much to the surprise of the crew onboard.
Assisting Rhymes, in addition to Delray of FBI and Stiletto of NYPD are the following: Eddie Deng, a junior Asian American agent from NYPD who substituted for Roland Bell who usually assists Stiletto; two INS agents, the experienced Harold Peabody and the young Alan Coe who seems to have a strong dislike of illegal immigrants.
The passengers hiding in the hold are desperate to escape. There were twenty to thirty illegal immigrants hiding in the hold. The bangshou, assistant, to the Ghost is among the illegal immigrants, hiding in plain sight.
Sonny Li was on the ship too, seasick, miserable. He led a dangerous life back home.
What they had not even accounted for is what happened. The ghost had the captain and all crew on the hold, so that he could be ‘the captain’ as he told the Captain. Then unexpectedly, he locked the hold from the outside and triggered several bombs stored inside the ship – set there by him earlier, causing the boat to sink. The passengers managed to find a way out, though several did not make it and drowned.
The Ghost also can make a mistake – he had put too much explosive and realized he has to make a chaotic exit. He gets a raft and goes to shore.
Sam Chang was wealthy but a dissident. His wife was injured and his rebellious son William, the younger Ronald and Sam’s elderly father accompanied him. Wu Qichen and his family, his teenage daughter and a young son also managed to escape last minute on a raft.
Meanwhile Sonny Li, one of the people in the boat also manages to escape. So does John Sung, a doctor and a dissident. He wears an amulet of a monkey made in soapstone.
When they realize the Ghost is firing at them, they all leave. Two immigrants were killed in a raft. John Sung was wounded but managed to cling to a rock. Amelia goes to save him but Sonny Li manages to steal a paper and knows where Lincoln Rhyme is. He goes to the room when he is alone but is apprehended by the observant Thom.
He turns out to be a detective in China on the hunt for Ghost and is retained by Lincoln, over the objection of others, to help with the investigation.
They realize that the driver of the getaway car for Ghost, one Johnny Tang, went away after waiting for Ghost and was shot at by Ghost.
The Chang and Wu family steered clear but managed to save Sonny Li in the midst of all the chaos. Wu’s wife was injured when the raft hit the rocks but they all made it. Wu’s and Chang stole a vehicle in front of the church and made it to New York.
We learn now that Sam Chang was a wealthy man in China but hounded out due to dissident activity against the government. Jerry Tang, his driver, leaves with his Mercedes while Ghost is searching for the remaining piglets to kill and Ghost shoots at the car, making a hole in the back.
Amelia finds John Sung on the rocks and saves his life. They develop a friendship. He gives her herbs to help with her arthritis. Sonny Li gets her papers from the car, taking care to spread the rest as if the wind blew them away, and goes to find Lincoln.
He manages to reach Lincoln’s place and uses the opportunity offered by a blond man clearing trash to sneak behind. He hears the detectives with Lincoln leaving, with the crippled man alone and steps into Rhyme’s bedroom. Only to be apprehended by the trap they had laid out for him. They learn that he is a cop and is also after The Ghost. Lincoln overrules the suspicious objection of others and invites Sonny to help him.
Meanwhile the Wus and Changs split up. Wus set up in Manhattan ChinaTown, even though they knew the Ghost will be searching for them in Chinatown. Changs moved to Flushing, the ‘new Chinatown’.
Jimmy Mah gets them false papers.
Sonny urges Lincoln’s team to find the driver as the Ghost will go after those who betrayed him before even going after the immigrants.
Meanwhile, Ghost hires Uighurs to track down the immigrants. They find Jimmy Mah and there is a chilling ‘friendly’ interrogation by Ghost who learns where the Changs and Wus are housed. Subsequently when there is a report of Jimmy Mah being killed, Lincoln and team do not connect it to the Ghost. They do connect the torture and killing of the driver of the car, Johnny Tang. Again Sonny deduces, from the destruction of the sacred statues of Buddha, and from the size of the footprints, that the people who did this are ethinic minorities on behalf of the Ghost. Amelia collects what could be the first evidence of Ghost from the chair he was sitting on, watching the torture.
Ghost finds that the address given by Changs is fake. He is thrilled when a relative of the Changs is willing to betray them for money but we learn that it is Sam Chang, who is willing to sacrifice his life to save his family. His father, who is dying of cancer, outwits him and manages to meet Ghost with a gun bought by the rebellious son of Chang. Though he manages to kill an Uighur, he could not kill the Ghost and dies in the process (though an overdose of morphine and thus suicide before the Ghost can torture him).
Meanwhile the Wus were guileless and their house is the next target of the Ghost. However, due to a brilliant detection of Lincoln on time, the Ghost almost walks into a trap and is only saved by a careless shot early in the game by the INS man Coe. Delray, facing an assassination attempt, recuses himself from the case, much to the chagrin of Lincoln.
Lincoln now realizes that the only way to get more clues is to search the sinking ship and Amelia is adamant that she should be the one to dive deep and ‘walk the grid’. She was already certified for diving in her earlier life and so knows how to go deep and check. There follows another fascinating scene of collecting evidence underwater. Jeffery as usual excels in his descriptions and his ability to weave a complex plot with unexpected twists.
She realizes that there is someone still trapped and alive (air pockets exist at the top of the ship which is leaning on its side on some rocks, underwater). That turns out to be the captain of the ship. It is an interesting twist where she encounters money floating around everywhere as well as corpses, since they are underwater doing a lazy dance, further unsettling her in that confined environment, where her chronic claustrophobia enhances the terror and tension.
When Sonny Li goes solo to find the Ghost and really succeeds in intercepting him, not only he but you, the reader, also get the shock of your life. The only difference is that this twist comes right in the middle and after that, whenever the Ghost is being included in the search for immigrants and in fact taken to see them with the police officers, you are at the edge of your seat. Amazing descriptions, as ever, in this book and the story relentlessly keeps up the tension.
The story further moves after the arrest of the Ghost and the final airport confrontation is deeply satisfying.
Another excellent book. I have to admit that the story, though excellent, is a notch below The Coffin Dancer we reviewed earlier.
Still I would say 8/10
– – Krishna