By Jeffery Deaver
Published by Harper Collins
448 pages ISBN 9780008303846
Publication date 25 November 2021
I was allowed access to a pdf review copy on Net Galley. Thanks to the author and publisher for organising this.
From the blurb
A killer without limits
He comes into your home at night. He watches you as you sleep. He waits.
A city in turmoil
He calls himself ‘The Locksmith’. No door can keep him out. No security system can catch him. And now he’s about to kill.
A race against time to stop him
Nobody in New York is safe. Now it’s up to Lincoln Rhyme to untangle the web of evidence and catch him.
But with Lincoln under investigation himself, and tension in the city at boiling point, time is running out…
Synopsis
Lincoln Rhyme is in court acting as expert witness in the prosecution of Viktor Antony Buryak a man who is a broker of information to the criminal underworld. Lincoln is uncharacteristically evasive, and the Defending Council is able to discredit his testimony. This results in the case being lost.
There is a new adversary for him in town in the guise of ‘The Locksmith’ who is an expert lockpicker. So far, he has broken into women’s apartments whilst they have been asleep but he has made his presence felt by moving objects, eating or drinking and by leaving his ‘calling card’ a page torn from a newspaper with a message written in their lipstick. These home invasions have been disturbing but so far there has been no physical harm, the fear is of escalation to rape or even murder.
The newspaper leads to the Whittaker Media Group a group full of tabloid excess run by a dysfunctional family. The patriarch and major shareholder has had a change of heart though and is in the process of winding up the Group’s businesses and reinvesting the proceeds into a better journalism centre. There’s certainly need for it to counter the rise of fake news and a conspiracy theorist blogger Verum who is warning of ‘The Hidden’.
However, before Lincoln and his team can make much progress a decision with monumental implications is made. The mayor with an eye on poll ratings cannot risk further humiliation so he decides that the NYPD can no longer use external consultants, including Lincoln. His team are reassigned, and his townhouse operations are closed. Catching The Locksmith has suddenly got a whole lot harder…
My thoughts
Mr Deaver goes back to his best known and most loved character Lincoln Rhyme. This (if I can count properly) is the fifteenth book in the series, which has also spawned a successful Hollywood movie and more recently a television series, which is still running strong.
What is the enduring appeal of the character? From my point of view, I think it’s that a seemingly vulnerable man, a quadriplegic, can thrive and save the day purely through his intelligence and inventiveness. The antipodal of the all-action hero. His character and situation have developed over the series and even though he can be insufferable the interactions with his team and outsiders are well thought out. I guess it’s not true that nobody likes a ‘smart ass’. The forensic science sub-genre of crime fiction is also very popular, particularly on television, and with further developments there is always plenty new to be incorporated.
Lincoln was originally portrayed as a man considering suicide who rediscovers his zest for life, even in his restricted capacity, through his work as a consultant. He has then had a resurgence in his inner strength, his strength of character, so to see him being portrayed as fallible and even incompetent at the start of the book is an interesting shift. Lincoln truly is a man who lives for his work.
The plot is multi-strand and gets a little bit convoluted but is adroitly pulled together at the end. It keeps a fairly keen pace throughout and the reader doesn’t get chance to get bored. There are plenty of action pieces where a major character is in trouble, but these of course are defused. With the main character being confined to a wheelchair the author regularly relies upon surprise intervention which is then explained after the event. As he cannot fight his way out of trouble he must think ahead and recognise trouble in advance and while the surprise intervention eventually stops becoming a surprise the other option would make for a boring read. There are also twists and false dawns aplenty, with the identity of The Locksmith apparently revealed more than once before it becomes clear who it really is.
This is a book for modern times though, touching on current themes like fake news, conspiracy theories and over exposure on social media, but these provide a backdrop rather than a specific theme. Much is about the power of familial relationships both good and bad and the desire for redemption.
The science can be a fascinating part of the story and the skill of the author is that of including enough to interest but not to get tedious. Whether it is all genuine I have no idea, some of it does seem to be a little bit far-fetched (autopsying a fly?) but we must remember it is fiction after all. The other slightly silly bit is the use of the nom de guerre by the criminals, but of course this is America where master criminals and serial killers must have a snappy moniker. This is something Great Britain has generally avoided although real life killer Stephen Griffiths did famously give his name as The Crossbow Cannibal in his magistrates’ court appearance.
Enjoyable escapist stuff that delivers just what the reader expects, I’ve no doubt this will keep his legion of fans happy.
Peter turns the page 