The Skin Collector

 

I’ve enjoyed a number of Jeffrey Dever’s novels over the years, but this one does not cut it for me. After losing my Kindle in a taxi when I was out of the country and was having trouble downloading new books, I felt like I was a captive audience to the audiobooks I had already downloaded to my phone. So I did finish it. This book was part of the Lincoln Rhyme novels, which was a very successful series. The first one, The Bone Collector, was published in 1997 and was made into a movie in 1999, starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. Along the way, Dever wrote about Lincoln Rhyme’s archenemy, The Watchmaker. Before The Skin Collector in 2014, The Watchmaker had apparently been killed off, but Dever brought him back in this book. Rhyme was a police captain in NYC until he was in an accident which left him as a quadriplegic. Still, his remarkable skills at solving murders was so good, that he continued to work on homicide cases. I just found this book to be tedious. The basic story line is good, and Rhyme was complemented by a strong cast of characters, but I also got bogged down in the details. There were lots of betrayals and surprise liaisons, but I was more than ready for the book to end by the time I hit the 50% mark. Nearly all prolific authors like Dever write one that does not live up to the standards they have set for themselves, and this book is one of those.

The Devil's Teardrop by Jeffery Deaver

I’ve entirely plagiarized the following review from Deaver’s website, and I did so because I was disappointed in the book and did want to spend any time putting together a synopsis. This was an “airplane book,” something that carries a decent plot and is somewhat entertaining, but is also easy to put down and walk away from. While I’m a fan of Deaver’s, his characters in this book were rather wooden, and the whole thing was too formulaic. Given that the hero of this book, Parker Kincaid, is a document reviewer and handwriting expert, it is fitting that the title of the book comes from his name for a certain style for dotting an “i.” That’s enough effort on my part. Now, the stolen review: “It's New Year's Eve, December 31, 1999, and Washington, D.C., is under siege. Early in the day, a grisly machine gun attack in the Dupont Circle Metro station leaves dozens dead and the city crippled with fear. A note delivered to the mayor's office pins the massacre on the Digger, a robotlike assassin programmed to wreak havoc on the capital every four hours — until midnight. Only a ransom of $20 million delivered to the Digger's accomplice — and mastermind — will end the death and terror. But the Digger becomes a far more sinister threat when his accomplice is killed in a freak accident while en route to the money drop. With the ransom note as the single scrap of evidence, Special Agent Margaret Lukas calls upon Parker Kincaid, a retired FBI agent and the top forensic document examiner in the country. Somehow, by midnight, they must find the Digger — before he finds them. The Devil's Teardrop was made into a TV movie airing on the Lifetime network in August 2010. It stars Natasha Henstridge, Tom Everett Scott, and Rena Sofer.”

The Coffin Dancer by Jeffrey Deaver

This is Deaver’s first book after The Bone Collector, which was made into a very good suspense movie with Denzel Washington, as Lincoln Rhyme, and Angelina Jolie, as Amelia Sachs. Rhyme is the quadriplegic criminalist and Sachs is his understudy, his feet and eyes for investigation. This story involves the same two characters and continues the development of their relationship. Despite Rhyme’s handicap, the sexual tension between him and Sachs is obvious. The name the “coffin dancer” comes from the tattoo on the arm of the highly successful assassin that Rhyme is tracking, which is the only information about him that anyone has. Throughout the book, Deaver makes fun of the book’s title and the name of this character as being overly melodramatic, which it is. This is the same assassin that Rhyme has encountered before failed to capture him. The character Dancer has apparently been hired by Phillip Hansen, a guy who is about to be indicted by the Feds for selling stolen military armaments, and Hansen needs three witnesses killed before they testify before the grand jury. The three people, Edward Carney, his wife Percey Clay, and pilot Brit Hale, who are starting a small private airline company, all witnessed what were apparently bags of evidence being thrown from a plane that carried Hansen. The action of this book all takes place in the 45 hours before the grand jury is scheduled to convene to consider the evidence against Hansen, so the action is fast. A line that Deaver repeats over and over about Dancer and his successful past assassinations and Rhyme’s inability to find him during the course of this book was, “His deadliest weapon is deception.” Deaver makes use of deception throughout the book. This was another good read, and Deaver is right in the middle of my power rotation.

The Sleeping Doll by Jeffrey Deaver

Daniel Raymond Pell was a serial killer in the manner of Charles Manson. On 9/13/99, he was convicted on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of manslaughter. In Carmel, California, he killed William Croyton, his wife and two of their three children, but he missed little Theresa who was upstairs, asleep in her bed. She became known to the press as “The Sleeping Doll.” Pell also killed James Newberg, one of his “family” who helped commit the crimes. The family included Newberg and three women. Imprisoned in a high security place in California, which sounds like Folsum Prison, Pell is accused of being responsible for an unsolved murder, so he is moved to a less secure place in order to be interviewed about this other murder. This is where his nemesis enters the scene, Kathryn Dance, an interviewer extraordinaire who matches wits with the very intelligent Pell. He had nothing to do with this other murder and the whole thing was a ploy for him to be able to escape, which he does. The book is about the contest between Pell at-large, and Dance, trying to recapture him. There is very good psychological study of the three women in the family who have already served out their prison terms and tried to move on with their lives, but they have not been in touch with each other since their convictions. Deaver brings in some other interesting characters. This was a good book, clever, and as I’m beginning to appreciate about Deaver, there are some very good unanticipated twists toward the end.
West Coast Don

The Bodies Left Behind by Jeffrey Deaver

I am surprised there are no Deaver books reviewed in the blog, especially given his genre and his prolific writing. I remember reading The Bone Collector but that must have been several years ago and more than a year before we started this blog project. This is a murder mystery that starts with the killing of a couple, the woman, Emma Feldman, a high powered attorney, and her husband, Steven, a social worker. The murder takes place in rural and remote Wisconsin, and that brings us to the primary character, Deputy Kristen Brynn McKenzie. There is a gradual character development of Brynn throughout the book that is closely tied to the unfolding of the mystery. Her boss, Sheriff Tom Dahl and other members of the Kennesha County, Wisconsin Sheriff’s Department take on peripheral roles. Another woman is intimately involved who Brynn discovers in the woods near the cabin where the murders occurred, and then they are both hunted by the killers. A significant portion of the book is the chase/hunt action in the forest, all in the course of one night, and it involves mostly just four characters, the two men who are in pursuit, and the two women. I’m surprised that this section held my interest so closely, but it did, and that is a tribute to Deaver’s unfolding plot, descriptive writing, and character development. This story has a great tie to the mob via a labor boss, Stanley Mankewitz. At any rate, Deaver does a great job with twists in the plot that I did not see coming, just as I thought we were concluding with some of the characters in the book. This is more than an airplane book, and I’ve already bought my next Deaver to read. Given the number of books that he’s written, I’m excited about this “discovery.”

West Coast Don