The Bone Collector

The Bone Collector – by Jeffery Deaver

Imagine that you’re reading a story where two characters are in a room with a large, massive haystack.  A third character puts a gun to their heads and tells them that they have one minute to find a small needle in this haystack.  Somehow, miraculously, without any explanation, the two characters manage to find the needle – with about one second to spare before their life gets ended.  Then, the same three people walk into another room, with another haystack, and the two people are given the same ultimatum.  Again, they somehow find the needle – with no explanation as to how, with only one second to go before the trigger is pulled.  My guess is that after this scenario is repeated four or five times, you would tend to become very frustrated with the story and these chain of events, and tend to write off this tale as being “unbelievable”.

Sadly, I felt these exact same emotions while reading The Bone Collector.  There’s a homicidal maniac on the loose in New York City.  He kidnaps random victims with the intention of slowly killing them, yet leaves just enough evidence (by “just enough” I mean “barely any”) to where the cops show up just in time to save the poor victim’s life.  Usually with seconds to spare.  And then, the cycle begins anew.

This is the first “Lincoln Rhyme” novel that author Jeffery Deaver penned.  Lincoln is a brilliant criminalist who’s able to miraculously string together the most minute details based on almost no evidence, and immediately know where, when, why, and how the serial killer will strike next.  Pretty impressive when we’re talking about a story that takes place in Manhattan with literally billions of nooks and crannies for psychopaths to hide.  Lincoln, also, is a quadriplegic.  He’s not a very friendly guy either.  Because of his condition (he was injured a couple of years ago in the line of duty), he’s confined to his home lab along with an assistant and some other law enforcement type characters to do his thinking and planning.  The local police actually go to him as soon as this lunatic is discovered since Lincoln is the only one that can help solve the crime quickly.  Did I say “quickly”?  It’s amazing just how much happens within a short, 48 hour time frame.  There’s enough crimes, dialogue and clues that would last a normal detective story about six months, but for some reason, the author seems compelled to make a lot (too much, really) happen in a very short time frame.

So innocent people get kidnapped, the “bone collector” (what our psycho is known as) drags them to some bizarre, hidden location, and tries to kill them (or have them killed) in some slow, painful way.  Because this is how he can “preserve” his victim’s bones.  Yep.  He’s a weird one.  Of all of Lincoln’s helpers, the young, ravishing beauty beat cop named Amelia Sachs stands out the most.  And I do mean “stands out”.  She’s the perennial beauty that shows up in most police stories.  You know, the one who looks like she’d be more at home modeling for Vogue as opposed to casing crime scenes.  Well, Lincoln and Amelia end up bonding pretty well.  Their attraction goes much further than your normal professional relationship, yet never too far.  After all, the man can’t move anything on his body other than his neck or one of his pinkies.

So this dynamic duo work very fast, with a lot of obstacles, and somehow manage to save the day.  Author Jeffery Deaver has actually written several novels featuring Rhymes and Sachs, yet this was the first one where we meet these two.  I must say that I’ve read some of the others, and actually enjoyed the others better than this one, but it was nice to see how these two met, and how their relationship began.

I was glad that I already was familiar with these two characters, because too much of the story didn’t sit well with me.  Apart from the plot being so unbelievable, I confess that I’m not a big fan of reading details about innocent people being kidnapped and tortured – regardless of whether the victim is male, female, young, or old (I believe there was at least one of each in this story).  Then, the technical, criminalist jargon was a bit much for me as well. There are a lot of big, forensic words in this tale, so at least we know the author did his homework.  It’s also helpful that he includes a glossary at the back of the book.

Still, it was nice to see how it all began with these two, so overall, I have to say that I enjoyed the story – just not as much as some of the others.  I also need to give the author credit for always knowing how to end a book.  He always pulls a few surprises by the time we get to the last few pages.  So much so, that I was waiting for a nice plot twist near the end, trying to figure out just how I would be duped again by the author.  Not surprisingly, I failed, and Mr. Deaver managed to surprise me once again.  His endings are always so well done, that they always make me add a few “points” to one of his book reviews.  Overall, this book was pretty good.  Not great, not awesome, but pretty good.