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.