Once again, we see Deaver at both his best and his worst. I am a long-time fan of Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme/Amelia Sachs forensic mysteries, and despite the fact that this latest novel contains Deaver’s hallmark thrills and chills and surprise twists and turns, I felt let down by the end. Perhaps it was because Deaver has such a complicated overlapping of plots that, in order to solve them all, he has our hero make 13th-hour leaps to conclusions which are simply not justified by the […]
A Mind Puzzle of a Crime Thriller
I’ve been a long-time fan of Deaver’s well-executed serial killer novels starring his dynamic duo Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs. His next series with Kathryn Dance was less inspired, and when he wrote the Ian Fleming knockoff Carte Blanche, I was worried that the old Deaver magic had gone walkabout. So I was happy to learn that Deaver has re-discovered his creative flair for the original and the bizarre in The October List. Don’t get me wrong—the writing itself is not stellar and the characters […]