Krishna
We review Jeffrey Deaver’s book in this space. Two of the earlier books reviewed are The Vanished Man and The Stone Monkey. All of the books reviewed so far feature Lincoln Rhyme, who is an intellectual giant but a quadriplegic and he solves crimes right from his house, with Amelia Sachs being his eyes, hand and feet when a crime scene has to be visited.
A hallmark of Rhyme stories is the number of twists and turns that the books contain. This book also features Rhyme and this book also contains a lot of surprising twists. But there seems to be one major difference with the other books : read on to find out what it is.
Clever Vincent and Gerald Duncan are driving a battered SUV where they had taken two others who are now murder victims.
Lincoln Rhyme is consulted by Ron Stiletto who tells him of a new perp who seems to have killed two people in a single day. The one thing that connects them is a handmade watch with a half moon figure on the dial, with a note attached to the watch, both left near the murder victim.
Amelia Sachs runs the scene at both sites.
Now Vincent likes to rape young women (calls it ‘having a heart to heart’) and George likes to kill them. They now target two women in a row. Stupidly Vincent leaves his coat unzipped and in the wind, the weapon he carries is seen by a passing young man; George ‘rectifies’ the mistake with a box cutter.
Clever Vincent remembers how he met George when he was about to follow his urges and rape a waitress who turned out to be an undercover policewoman. George stepped in just in time to prevent him going to what would have been his certain arrest. He then makes an offer to Vincent where the latter can satisfy his urges safely with women whom he, George, was planning to murder.
In return, Vincent will give him the local knowledge – George came from far.
Through the expertise of a professional interrogator, Kathryn Dance, they understand that a businessman, Ari Cobb saw a car parked at the end of the alley and it backed up a little before he passed the place and lost sight. Rhyme wonders why. But they get tire tracks and from that, a description of the vehicle from the new insight. Selitto is impressed with Kathryn’s techniques in wringing the information from a reluctant witness (Ari).
They recruit her to interview the watch shop and learn to their consternation that the person who bought the watches – he wore gloves and paid in untraceable cash – bought not two but ten watches altogether. Lincoln Rhymes is impressed enough with Kathryn to ask her to stay and help with the case.
Amazingly, as the flower girl was targeted with Duncan in the shop with a stopwatch and Vincent on the getaway van, Vincent hears the police coming to the shop and warns Duncan with a walkie talkie and they just manage to escape. Duncan is very curious how they were on to him and when he realizes that even his van was compromised, he wonders who it is, who is this clever, who is after them. Could that be the redhead detective who was walking the earlier crime scene? (He watched from the opposite abandoned building). They just manage to escape by parking the van in a garage and running away. Duncan decided to go back.
Coincidentally, the rookie cop Ron Pulaski is sent to track out the van with Lincoln connected to him by wireless. He is attacked by a homeless man but manages to overpower him.
If you have been reading Lincoln Rhymes stories like I have, you know that each one has a theme in it, apart from the main story. (Refugees and Asian culture in The Stone Monkey for instance; magic tricks and sleight of hand in The Twelfth Card). This adds to the allure of an already good story. This book is no exception. It deals a lot with timekeeping on one side and kinesics (the art of reading signs through body movement and posture) on the other. Lovely.
The next victim they choose is Lucy xxx who was a military woman who was on a break back in the US. Duncan manages to enter the house and leave a watch. As I was about to move in for the kill (with Vincent waiting in the getaway car so that he could come in and have a ‘heart to heart’ with the corpse on Duncan’s signal on the walkie talkie), he sees that she is on the phone. He waits but she is not finishing the conversation. He decides to exit and knock on the door pretending to be police – so that she will be forced to come to the door. The plan goes wrong and she escapes, leaving her alive (but startled). The second defeat after the flower girl fiasco has Duncan wondering what clever person was after him. (Though this time it was just coincidental event that foiled his plan – I am trying not to give too many details!)
At this point, you are wondering, ‘Where are the superb twists and turns that Jeffrey is known for? You know who the killers are, you know what they are doing, and so is it just a very clever detective story where Rhymes and Sachs join hands in their famous way to solve a serial killer’s plan? ‘ But you underestimate the author, as I did, even after reading so many of his books and should have known better.
The first major twist comes when a grocery vendor is interviewed by Kathryn Dance and you suddenly realize that this man, Tony Parsons, is actually Vincent, on Gerald’s instructions, trying to pretend to be a witness and taking Kathryn to a deserted place to ‘show her’ where Gerald had taken him. He is, of course, captured, and interrogated in front of Rhyme. He reluctantly confesses about Gerald Duncan and why he is killing the victims – they were nearby when his wife bled to death and could have saved her.
The second twist comes when you realize that Gerald, rather than being Vincent’s only and best friend, sacrificed him with a phony story about his wife to mislead the police about who he is and what his real intentions are. We come to know about it when he meets a police Lieutenant Dennis Baker, the same one who had chewed out Amelia Sachs for trespassing and you realize what the real purpose of Gerald Duncan is, and why the elaborate pretense of the serial killer running amok for revenge.
After a very tense moment where Ron Pulaski the eager rookie who seems to be shaping up well, and Amelia are both in danger of losing their lives, Baker himself is arrested. In a fabulous twist, Wallace and Amelia go to see the police top officer xxx where suddenly Amelia finds herself confronting Wallace as a collaborator. Another brilliant twist follows.
Now, if you cannot take this many twists and turns in a single story, Deaver is not for you! Because in the very next pages comes the puzzle of Duncan claiming that he plotted this revenge against corrupt cops pretending to be a serial killer because his businessman friend was killed in an apparent mugging. He also said that the friend, Andrew Culbert, had saved his life when he was in the army. Lincoln of course had to check this out and got his file. Weirdly, when he died, Andrew had two slips in his pocket – one reading Chardonnay and the other ‘Men’s Room’ that got Lincoln thinking and turned the whole case upside down again!
They realize that they had let Gerald Duncan slip through their fingers when they realize that he had easily escaped from the light police custody and on suspicion, they checked and found that he was not who he claimed to be.
Jeffrey finally reveals the real man behind the facades: Charles Vespacian Hale. He is a very highly skilled self made man, who does contract work of the highest difficulties and manages to execute perfectly planned tasks – including murder.
The triple feint he has created includes a final feint where everyone thinks he is out to tamper with the atomic clock, disrupting nationwide timekeeping in this age of connected devices while his real intent has been something else.
Brilliant as ever, but now to the one crucial difference. Deaver does not seem to be satisfied with Lincoln collaring ingenious perps and wants to create his equal – his Moriarty to Lincoln as Sherlock. Towards the end there is that perplexing sense that this will continue in another book. In that sense, it is extremely unusual and, well, disappointing.
Still, credit where credit is due. The story is well plotted and includes personal struggles of Amelia related to her father, and even there, a nice little surprise bundle at the end of the parallel strand.
Well worth reading
7/10
= = Krishna