Jeffery Deaver has done it again, deceiving me each page along the way, in his seventh outing with his famous Lincoln Rhyme character. I love Rhyme, and will read anything that character stars in.
In 2006’s The Cold Moon, not only does Deaver give us the usual fun with Rhyme and the cast of characters we’ve come to expect around him, including Amelia Sachs, his detective protégé and lover; and Lon Sellitto (detective), Mel Cooper (data guru), Ron Pulaski (forever the rookie officer), and Thom, his live-in aid, but this is the book where Deaver introduces a new character who would go on to get her own spin-off series, Kathryn Dance. Dance is a kinesics expert, or the study of body language, and an expert in verbal communication, too. All of these characters are distinct and loveable because of their distinct attributes and talents.
But it wouldn’t be Deaver if he also wasn’t weaving a masterful story of suspense and intrigue, the catalyst of which is Deaver’s interest in a certain topic that then unfurls throughout as both what propels the plot forward, and the overarching theme; in this case, that was Deaver’s fascination with watches as actual devices, and then philosophically how we imbue watches (and watchmakers) with importance and other attributes because of the even larger questions about time and our place within “time.”
I seriously couldn’t guess this one! There’s two simultaneous criminal cases going on in the book, as Deaver often does, and I suspected they would come to overlap, but I didn’t envision how they would in the slightest. The larger case concerns the Watchmaker, a serial killer in NYC who is working alongside a rapist to terrorize the city five short years after 9/11. He leaves moon-faced clocks by the bodies after torturing the victim to death. The “smaller” case is Sachs’ first homicide case where she’s the lead concerning a businessman who seems to have died by suicide, but his wife isn’t convinced of that. As it turns out, that case leads back to corruption within the police department.
The Watchmaker sets up the rapist to go to jail and throw the police off of his trail. Then, the two cases converge when the corrupt cop, who was working alongside Sachs and Rhyme, reveals he actually hired the Watchmaker and all of the “serial killing” was merely a ruse to get Sachs alone to shoot and kill her to end the investigation into the corruption. Then, that itself was a ruse for the Watchmaker to argue he was never a serial killer or a hitman hired by the corrupt cop. Rather, he was out for revenge against the corrupt cop and everything up to that point was merely a ruse to achieve ensnaring the corrupt cop.
That then turned out to be a ruse to fool Sachs and Rhyme so the Watchmaker could achieve his actual stated reason for being in NYC: to bomb the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where a bunch of Pentagon officials and soldiers are gathering, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was hired by a radical right-wing terrorist group, which also had a member who ties back to Sachs and Rhyme’s first case featured in 1997’s The Bone Collector. The Watchmaker, you see, doesn’t have any traditional motives for killing, like revenge or money. He kills because achieving what’s thought to be an impossible kill (or killings) is tantamount to crafting the perfect watch. Intricate and beautiful in design and execution (heh).
Deaver’s twists and turns had me all topsy-turvy. Again, there was no way of predicting where it was all going, and that’s a credit to the way he plots and his sleights-of-hand. There’s nowhere to slip this in, but I find it amusing when Rhyme and his team arrest a suspect, they bring him back to Rhyme’s townhome! Why would you expose Rhyme and his private residence like that?! I’m shocked the Watchmaker didn’t take advantage of such an opportunity.
But anyhow, like I said, there was also an interesting theme throughout about time, like if Sachs’ time is up with the NYPD after learning that her dad was seemingly corrupt, too, back in the 1970s (he wasn’t and she decided to stay on the force to do good). Or the perpetual issue of time with Rhyme, both in what was taken from him due to his injury and what time, and advances in medicine, could give back to him. Or if Pulaski allowed enough time for himself to recover from a severe head injury. Or the borrowed time everyone has to use Dance’s talents and skills before she returns to California. Or you know, the ticking clock of trying to catching a serial killer, and then later, to stop him before the bomb goes off at HUD.
So, they do thwart the Watchmaker’s real mission at HUD, but they don’t catch him, and therefore, the best thing that can happen to a reader happened to me. I randomly read The Cold Moon, and then Deaver just came out with a follow-up book, The Watchmaker’s Hand. I can’t wait to read it, and see if Rhyme catches him this time.
If you love Deaver, and especially if you love the Rhyme series, you will love the introductions of one of Rhyme’s most formidable opponents in the Watchmaker, along with one of Deaver’s best protagonists, Dance. Nobody deceives like Deaver.
Milam's Musings 