THE BONE COLLECTOR by Jeffery Deaver - SIGNED FIRST EDITION BOOK
See all titles by Jeffery Deaver.
Jeffery Deaver's 1997 thriller The Bone Collector gets a new
lease on life, courtesy of a high-profile film adaptation starring
Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. I haven't seen the movie, but I
can vouch for the effectiveness of the novel. It's an absorbing,
high-energy performance that features great technical expertise, some
truly devious plotting, and one of the most unusual heroes in modern
crime fiction: Lincoln Rhyme, forensic genius and former head of the
NYPD's Central Investigation and Resource Department.
Lincoln Rhyme is a legend in his field, the man who literally wrote the
book on forensic analysis of crime scenes. He is also a quadriplegic,
his spine having been irreversibly damaged during a cave-in at an
underground murder site. As the novel opens, Lincoln has reached the
end of his emotional tether and wants only to die. Unable to endure the
constraints and humiliations of his new condition, he has enlisted the
services of a professional "euthanasist" to help him on his way. At the
eleventh hour, with oblivion within his grasp, Lincoln is visited by a
pair of detectives who offer him something he can't quite refuse: a new
-- and unusual -- case.
On the previous evening, a man and woman returning from a business trip
had been kidnapped at JFK airport, apparently by their taxi driver. The
man's body -- shot, mutilated, then buried alive -- has just been found
by an NYPD patrol officer named Amelia Sachs, who closes off the crime
scene and secures the available evidence. Included among that evidence
are some enigmatic clues -- a scrap of newsprint, a ball of asbestos, a
rusted iron bolt -- that appear to have been placed deliberately at the
scene. With the expert assistance of a reluctant Lincoln Rhyme, police
follow these clues to the location of the abducted woman. They arrive
just minutes too late to save the woman, who has been murdered in a
particularly brutal fashion. Near her body is a second series of
"staged" forensic clues, pointing to the location of the next unknown
victim.
Against his will, Lincoln finds himself at the center of a manhunt that
interrupts his planned departure and transforms his apartment into an
impromptu forensic lab. Using patrolwoman Amelia Sachs as his eyes and
legs, Lincoln engages in a sustained battle of wits with an unknown
killer who leads him to a series of crime scenes, each of which is
salted with evidence pointing to the next crime scene and the next
victim. During the course of this macabre, extended game -- which lasts
for about 36 hours and is played out against a backdrop of political
infighting and jurisdictional disputes -- Lincoln saves a number of
lives, including his own. In the end, he comes face-to-face with an
elusive -- and very familiar -- madman whose pathological obsession has
its origin in Lincoln's own past.
In crime scene after crime scene, Lincoln -- operating through his
observant, mobile assistant, Amelia -- uncovers two distinct types of
physical evidence: staged evidence deliberately left behind and other,
unintended bits of evidence that lead, in incremental stages, to the
killer's home base. Watching Lincoln and his cohorts interpret this
evidence -- sometimes intuitively, sometimes with the aid of assorted
technological marvels -- is the greatest of The Bone Collector's
many pleasures. Like Michael Crichton, Deaver manages to integrate a
vast amount of research into a coherent, involving novel without either
lecturing the reader or crossing the invisible line into pedantry. It's
a difficult trick to perform, and Deaver brings it off with impressive
-- and deceptive -- ease.