From the New York Times bestselling author of The Skin Collector and The Bone Collector — Lincoln Rhyme is back, on the trail of a killer whose weapon of choice cripples New York City with fear.
The weapon is invisible and omnipresent. Without it, modern society grinds to a halt. It is electricity. The killer harnesses and steers huge arc flashes with voltage so high and heat so searing that … high and heat so searing that steel melts and his victims are set afire.
When the first explosion occurs in broad daylight, reducing a city bus to a pile of molten, shrapnel-riddled metal, officials fear terrorism. Rhyme, a world-class forensic criminologist known for his successful apprehension of the most devious criminals, is immediately tapped for the investigation. Long a quadriplegic, he assembles NYPD detective Amelia Sachs and officer Ron Pulaski as his eyes, ears and legs on crime sites, and FBI agent Fred Dellray as his undercover man on the street. As the attacks continue across the city at a sickening pace, and terrifying demand letters begin appearing, the team works desperately against time and with maddeningly little forensic evidence to try to find the killer. Or is it killers…?
Meanwhile, Rhyme is consulting on another high-profile investigation in Mexico with a most coveted quarry in his crosshairs: the hired killer known as the Watchmaker, one of the few criminals to have eluded Rhyme’s net.
Juggling two massive investigations against a cruel ticking clock takes a toll on Rhyme’s health. Soon Rhyme is fighting on yet another front — and his determination to work despite his physical limitations threatens to drive away his closest allies when he needs them most…
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A real page turner with great characters.
The book is another in the Lincoln Rhyme series, so the characters are known to those who enjoy the series. Like all these books, it keeps the reader on the edge of your seat
.Great atmosphere and a good. Solid plot
Someone or, perhaps, some terrorist organization has harnessed Algonquin Consolidated Power and Light’s electricity grid as a weapon with which to imperil New York City’s denizens. The first incident results in an arc flash which severely burns a number of victims and which kills another in an especially grisly manner. After that, demands begin to arrive at the office of Andrea Jessen, Algonquin CEO, requiring her to brown-out or completely shut down sections of the city’s extensive power grid, otherwise others will die. Such actions could endanger New York City’s and several surrounding areas’ entire security systems. Because acceding to the demands is an impossibility due to both security measures and time factors, the murderous atrocities continue, the deaths ever greater in number, as law enforcement tries to identify and stop the individual or group behind them.
Called in to consult with the NYPD, the FBI, Homeland Security and, ultimately, to take over the prime investigation, are criminalist/former NYPD captain Lincoln Rhyme and his forensics team: NYPD detectives Amelia Sachs, Mel Cooper, and Ron Pulaski.
Rhyme, a quadriplegic as the result of an accident from his days as an active police officer, now works from his Victorian townhouse, Sachs and Pulaski functioning as his eyes and ears when they are out in the field examining crime scenes or following leads. Abrupt, uncompromising, practical, demanding, and tightly focused, the house-bound Rhyme strikes me as an amalgam of Nero Wolfe, pulp fiction’s Inspector Allhoff, television’s Ironside and Leroy Jethro Gibbs—regardless of whether the author intended any of this.
Rhyme is partially teamed with Jeffery Deaver’s other series character, California police detective Kathryn Dance, in the pursuit of a murderer known as the Watchmaker, who has been spotted in Mexico. Dance, in turn, puts Rhyme in touch with Commander Rodolfo Luna, whose team leads the trackdown of the Watchmaker.
( Hmm…Rhyme and Dance—sounds like a bizarre new fad or a third-rate vaudeville act. But I digress.)
The only other novel by Jeffery Deaver I’ve read is A MAIDEN’S GRAVE, which was tense and hard to stop reading, as I still recall after many years, and which I can assuredly recommend. I made it through THE BURNING WIRE fairly quickly, too, though initially I wasn’t sure I’d get through it at all. Divided into five sections, the first is overloaded with forensic investigative technique, terminology and information, and I have to concede that when it comes to crime fiction, I’m something of a Luddite regarding the scientific approach to detection. But recognizing that the nature of THE BURNING WIRE case required such an approach, I stuck with it and, once into the second section, was rewarded with a fairly taut, fast-paced suspense novel (albeit still with a lot of forensics) that delivered several twists and surprises, and even included some traditional deductive reasoning by Lincoln Rhyme near the end. My biggest complaint is that the characterization was superficial at best.
Warning to squeamish readers: there are more than a few instances of raw and raunchy language in this one, so those who find it offensive will want to steer clear. Those who can handle it and who like so-called “ticking clock” thrillers will probably find this one appealing. As for yours truly, there’s a novel in the Rhyme series that involves an “impossible” disappearance, so it’s highly probable I’ll be visiting this sleuth sat least one more time, as well as reading more of the author’s standalones.
© 2015 Barry Ergang
Quite a scary premise
Jeffery Deaver is one of the BEST suspense writers! Thank you for sharing your talents with us.