Saturday, April 21

The Cold Moon – Jeffrey Deaver

I loved A Maiden’s Grave, the first of Deaver’s novels I read, and since then he’s been one of my buy-on-sight authors. Due to my (theoretically adhered to) book budget I waited until the latest Rhyme novel was released in regular paperback, then sat on it for a bit.
A little background - Lincoln Rhyme is a quadriplegic New York criminologist who’s involved with Amelia Sachs, model-turned-cop. Money being no object (for reasons I no longer recall but which I’m sure were made clear in the first few books), he has a fully equipped lab in his home, and has a full-time carer.
The Cold Moon opens with the killer and his assistant – the Watchmaker kills apparently random people through torturous methods, then leaves a signature clock by the bodies. The first two crime scenes are found in rapid succession, though the second victim – left hanging to the edge of a pier with wrists slit – has vanished into the water, and the hunt is on.
In the meantime Amelia is caught up in her own case – her trustworthy, honest, beloved, dead police officer father was involved in a corruption scandal many years ago. Though not convicted (due to misplaced evidence), there seems to be no doubt he was dirty; another cop refers to him as ‘the one who got away’.
As the Watchmaker case become increasingly baroque (there are no fewer than four significant misdirections orchestrated by the killer), and intertwines itself with her case, Amelia has to decide whether or not to stay with the force.
I enjoyed the first few Rhyme novels but by The Twelfth Card (book six) it was all starting to wear a little thin, and I’m now officially over it. The first Cold Moon twist was interesting, the second, irritating, and by the end it was just a Matryoshka-like tiresome exercise to display the author/Deaver’s cleverness. In fact, that’s not strictly accurate – the writing style annoyed me by page ten, when I came to the following sentence:

Now, early on a cold Tuesday morning, these were Rhyme’s thoughts as he listened to a National Public Radio Announcer, in her unshakable FM voice, report about a parade planned for the day after tomorrow, followed by some ceremonies and meetings of government officials, all of which should logically have been held in the nation’s capital.

Breathe with me now.There is way too much “I researched this and now you’re going to read it” detail, to whit:
There was very little evidence, just the fingernail, probably a man’s, the blood, which Mel tested and found to be human and type AB positive, which meant that both A and B antigens – proteins – were present in the victim’s plasma, and neither anti-A or anti-B were. In addition, a separate protein, Rh, was present. The combination of AB antigens and Rh positive made the victim’s the third-rarest blood type, accounting for about 3.5 per cent of the population. Further tests confirmed the victim was male.

I also found grating the frequent use of “the rumpled detective offered”, “looked at the Californian agent”, ‘the rapist answered”, and “the rookie” used almost exclusively instead of Ron Pulaski’s name – they’re all main characters, they all have names. Though, to be fair, I was finding the whole experience a trial by this point, so it may not all have been down to the descriptive style. I did like the introduction of kinesic analyst Kathryn Dancer (a.k.a. the “Californian special agent”) and discussion about her techniques for ascertaining truthfulness when talking to people. Her aside, I’m officially over Jeffrey Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme novels, and possibly the rest of his future work altogether. Which is why I was so pissed off to find that his next novel centred of Kathryn Dancer. Decisions, decisions... – Alex

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