The Stone Monkey

The Stone Monkey by Jeffery Deaver

I have read at least one Jeffery Deaver novel in my lifetime, so I was a little bit familiar with his style of writing and his characters.  When I picked this one up in my garage (where we store our massive collection of books), I was unsure if I had read this one before.  This is one of the downsides of reading as frequently as I do - not only can I not remember many of the stories within the books I’ve read,  I can’t even recall which books by an author that I have read.  Reading the summary on the back of the book, sadly, doesn’t help much either.  

Anyway, when I started (again?) on this story, the beginning seemed a bit familiar, but I decided I would plod along since the majority of the story seemed unfamiliar enough to keep my interest.  When I finished this book, I still couldn’t remember if I had read it before, but I was glad I picked it up and read it.  I simply loved this story.

This is one of Deaver’s many books that revolve around a pair of his famed protagonists Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs.  Since I haven’t read the majority of Deaver’s releases, I’m not sure how Rhyme and Sachs arrived at their current set of  circumstances.  Essentially, he is a quadriplegic “criminalist” that was injured in the line of duty.  The only thing that can really function on his body is his brilliant brain and his ability to communicate from his pod where he works and lives.  Sachs is the stereotypical female cop in all of these books.  Beautiful, resilient, long flowing auburn hair, etc. etc.  Apparently these two had somewhat of a relationship before Rhyme’s accident, yet they are still together even though, for obvious reasons, their relationship is somewhat limited.  He is also a bit of a grouch, but under the circumstances, who wouldn’t be?  So whenever there is a big crime to solve, Amelia essentially goes out and does the physical work, and Rhyme does the thinking and talking through her earpiece, and the two of them are quite the pair.

In this particular book, the story opens with a ship filled with illegal Chinese immigrants heading to New York, along with their “Snakehead” leader, who is referred to as “The Ghost”.  The Ghost is definitely a shady character who is never up to any good and has a nasty background, but if you’re trying to flee Communist China, you need a sponsor, and beggars can’t be choosers.  In this story, though, the immigrants are about to be betrayed. The Ghost is trying to cut all ties to much of his past, so while the ship has not quite arrived at the shore, he blows up the ship and makes a getaway on a portable raft and eliminates all of the potential witnesses.  Or so he thinks.  It turns out, much of the cargo of illegals survives, so the Ghost must now track them down one by one and kill them.  Not an easy thing to do since everyone on board are illegals.  They come ashore close to Chinatown in New York City, so a couple of the families from the ship have at least some sort of destination in mind.  It’s just going to be difficult for all to get where they need to go.

So the Ghost starts to leave a trail of dead bodies as he’s trying to eliminate everyone that was on board, and he heads to Chinatown himself to finish what he has started.  So now Rhyme and Sachs (along with a host of supporting players) are called in to figure out who, what, and why is behind all of this.  This is one of the book’s major strengths as the Lincoln Rhyme character really knows his stuff, and manages to put together a puzzle of clues that will eventually help the team nab their perpetrator.  One of Jeffery Deaver’s helpful nuances is that, at the end of every few chapters, he includes a “virtual chalkboard” of all the clues that Lincoln Rhyme and company have uncovered.  This way, the reader doesn’t have to memorize all of incidents that have occurred in the story to help follow all of the progress that our heroes have made.  When we get lost in the complex labyrinth, we can simply flip to the “chalkboards” in the book and be reminded of everything Rhyme and company have uncovered.  Helpful if you don’t happen to have a photographic memory.

One of the things about this book that I really enjoyed were the many plot twists and turns that always kept me guessing.  It seems like every time you read another dozen pages, one of the good guys turns out to really be a bad guy or vice-versa.  I was fooled many times about many of the character’s motives.  This, in my judgement, is what good writing should be.  The story simply grips you and you don’t want to let it go.  I found the conclusion to be very satisfying, if somewhat a bit unbelievable.  I enjoyed this book so much that I wanted to quickly read more work from this author.  I then found out that we had about four more of his novels in our collection out in the garage, yet he has actually written about thirty pieces of work.  So, me being me, I went on E-Bay and found a collection of about 15 of his books for about $25.  My wife can only roll her eyes.

So look for more reviews on this author’s work from me in the near future!