Tangled Web UK Review September 2000
The Empty Chair by
Jeffery Deaver
hbk out July 00
Published by Hodder & Stoughton
at £10
Criminalist Lincoln Rhyme is about to undergo experimental surgery in a spinal cord injuries centre in North Carolina when he and his assistant Amelia Sachs are drafted in to help the local police. A boy has been killed and two young women kidnapped by local misfit The Insect Boy. One of the officers who tried to follow them was lured into a trap, a nest of vicious hornets and ended up in a coma. The race is on to catch the Insect Boy before he kills his hostages.
Rhyme promises them a day and instructs the locals to set up a forensic lab so he can use his skills to track down the killer. A cat and mouse game develops with the criminalist and Sachs hunting the Insect Boy through the abandoned swamps of North Carolina. The chase is hampered by the unwelcome involvement of local rednecks as well as disgruntled local cops.
Deaver’s story is littered with bluffs and double-crosses so both protagonists and reader are caught out and subjected to a series of shocks. In a sequence of audacious switches and reversals of fortune the tale twists and turns like a mountain pass full of hairpin bends. Deaver takes the roller coaster thriller to the limit. Entertaining, suspenseful stuff that leaves us reeling.
First appeared in Manchester Evening News 21/7/00
(
Cath Staincliffe
- Author of the highly acclaimed Sal Kilkenny Mysteries set on the Mean Streets of Manchester)
