The Burning Wire

The Burning Wire – by Jeffery Deaver

The Lincoln Rhyme books by Jeffery Deaver remind me of watching your favorite “crime solving” show on t.v. What I mean by that is, these books are all very similar. Almost too similar. They’re very good books, I just can’t help but feel like Deaver is basically telling us the same story over and over again. Same people, same issues, same personalities, same details, just a different killer with a different motive. Like a television show.

The criminal this go round is using electricity. That’s our topic for this book, boys and girls. We’re all familiar enough with electricity to know that we desperately need it to survive, yet most of us are a bit fearful of it as well. We know that touching one “wrong wire” can instantly kill us, and we’re smart enough to keep the hair dryer far away from a bathtub filled with water.

So, yes, our killer is using his expertise to cause panic and mass destruction around New York City, so Rhyme and his team must work quick to stop it.  This is where things seem a tad redundant if you’ve read many other Lincoln Rhyme books. Part of the problem, I’m now realizing, is that the fact that Rhyme is a quadriplegic which basically means that every one of these stories seems to be confined to Rhyme’s apartment/lab, and every crime seems to take place in New York City. There simply isn’t much room for variety.

Plus, we have the same tired characters over and over again. There’s his partner Amelia – the beautiful redhead who’s arthritic, scratches her scalp until it bleeds, and somehow races cars through the biggest parking lot in the world. We have Pulaski, the young “rookie” who is treated like a pledge in a college fraternity by the ever grumpy Rhyme.  There’s Stilleto, who’s never far away from a pastry, and Dellray, who goes under cover a lot wearing yellow leisure suits. And on and on and on.  So, again, think of a television show with the same main characters every episode, and you get the drift.

These stories are also somewhat sequential. It’s best to read them in order. Our character’s progress somewhat, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I didn’t enjoy it, however, when Deaver includes unfinished business from the plot of older novels into this new novel. He’s done this before. It’s almost as if he’s trying to simply fill the space in the books.

Sadly, the plot twists that Deaver is famous for seem to be wearing thin for me as well. When one gets surprised over and over again, one stops becoming flabbergasted.

Had this been my second or third Lincoln Rhyme book, I probably would have enjoyed it much better than I did.  I think, in the series, this was probably about the eighth or ninth, and I just couldn’t help but feel I was reading the same story over and over again.  Deaver is good. He’s very good. Sometimes I wish he would give Rhyme and company a prolonged rest and tackle other subjects more often, though.