Tag Archives: Jeffery Deaver

This is my second reading of this book, it turns out, having bought a cheap paperback edition at the local charity shop. I did not remember the ending, so it must have been some years ago!

The titular empty chair has two meanings – one is that of a technique used in the book, to encourage the suspect Garrett to talk about his feelings by imagining the person he wants to talk to is sitting on the chair (even his sadly departed father). The other chair belongs to Lincoln Rhyme, who is considering an experimental operation that might improve his mobility – or possibly kill him.

The plot follows the hunt to recover Mary Beth, who has been kidnapped by Garrett, and also Lydia (a nurse at the hospital) who is also kidnapped by Garrett. Garrett has an obsession with insects, and is rather uncared for, with itchy skin and blemishes. He is, however, very smart – and it turns out that his traumatic past (his family were killed in a car) triggered his truancy from school and bad behaviour at the foster home.

To add to the complications, Amelia Sachs (Lincoln’s partner) is sympathetic towards Garrett and assists him to escape from jail, in order to locate Mary Beth. In the ensuing chase, she comes under fire from the police, with deadly consequences.

⭐⭐⭐

This is another of Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme thrillers. It features The Watchmaker, a killer from one of his previous books, who has turned up in Mexico. In fact, Deaver uses this side-plot to introduce his other character Kathryn Dance for some free publicity.

The main plot concerns a series of horrific incidents where the perpetrator connects a device to the main electricity lines to cause devastation. He’s not adverse to more direct action on individuals either – but Lincoln Rhyme is able to track him using uncanny forensics and insight.

I may have missed some of the suspense and intrigue because I hadn’t read the previous Watchmaker book – reading them out of order, I was a little underwhelmed.

Another in the Lincoln Rhyme/Amelia Sachs series from Jeffery Deaver – this one is pretty good and hints at the dangers for society with the growth of corporations that store massive amounts of data about private citizens.

This is another in the Lincoln Rhyme series by Jeffery Deaver. Highlights of that series include The Bone Collector and The Coffin Dancer. This one falls short of that standard in my view, mainly because the whole plot falls down on a basic question – why is The Ghost (a sinister, violent figure from the Chinese underworld) going around trying to kill all the illegal immigrants that he was attempting to smuggle to America? Unusually, I was way ahead of the hero, Lincoln Rhyme, in questioning this motive – he only worked it out at the end of the book. Yet without knowing why this was going on, the book didn’t make sense to me.