This is forensic scientist, quadriplegic Lincoln Rhyme’s eleventh case. He is an interesting character surrounded by a great team so fans will be among old favourites. Newcomers will be fine for Jeffery Deaver is very good at introducing you to his characters in each book. This is the follow-up to The Bone Collector, his first case. Here old adversary, The Watchmaker, is now dead in prison(!). Rhyme is most interested as to who will collect the ashes and one of his colleagues goes undercover to find out. So with plot and counterplot, twist and then some, this bounds along at a compulsive pace. Short chapters leave you anxiously moving on in an excellent thriller
COPYCAT? OR REVENGE? They have never seen a murder like it. A talented tattoo artist is using poison instead of ink. His victim is a young woman. And on her skin he's left a message: 'the second'. Drafted in to investigate, NYPD detective Lincoln Rhyme and his associate Amelia Sachs find the scene has been scrubbed of evidence. All except for one trace - a scrap of paper that connects this case with one they will never forget. And like the Bone Collector before him, Rhyme and Sachs find themselves pitted against a twisted serial killer choosing his victims seemingly at random, a perpetrator who plans his work to the last detail, in a deadly contest with any who try to stop him. But how close is his connection with that old case? What is the meaning of the words tattooed in poison on the skin of his first victim? And where will he strike next?
'Brilliant ... it's easy to get swept up in the sheer velocity of the action' Scotsman
'The most creative, skilled and intriguing thriller writer in the world ... [Deaver] has produced a stunning series of bestsellers with unique characterisation, intelligent characters, beguiling plots and double-barrelled and sometimes triple-barrelled solutions.' Daily Telegraph
'The pace is terrific, the suspense inexorable, and there is an excellent climax ... If you want thrills, Deaver is your man.' Guardian
Author
About Jeffery Deaver
Jeffery Deaver is the author of three collections of short stories and 32 suspense novels. He is best known for his Lincoln Rhyme thrillers, which include the number one bestsellers The Vanished Man, The Twelfth Card and The Cold Moon, as well as The Bone Collector which was made into a feature film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. The first Kathryn Dance novel, The Sleeping Doll, was published in 2007 to enormous acclaim.
A three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader's Award for Best Short Story of the year, he has been nominated for an Anthony Award and six Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America. He won the WH Smith Thumping Good Read Award in 2001 and in 2004 won the Crime Writers' Association Steel Dagger for Best Thriller with Garden of Beasts, and their Short Story Dagger for The Weekender from Twisted.
Jeffery Deaver lives in North Carolina and California.
