The Coffin Dancer

The Coffin Dancer
by Jeffery Deaver
Recommended Ages: 14+

This book showcases all that is most strikingly original about the formula for the Lincoln Rhyme crime thriller. What kind of crime is best solved by a quadriplegic criminalist who analyzes crime scene evidence at superhuman speed in his home lab, aided by a crack team of canvassers, detectives, a master of disguise and a tough, beautiful crime scene tech like Amelia Sachs? Why, crimes that are still in progress or are about to be committed, of course! Solving diabolically clever murders under extreme time pressure is Rhyme's bread and butter, and the fact that he needs a home health aide to feed it to him is just a detail.

In this outing, Rhyme and Sachs are after a hit-man who has been hired to rub out three witnesses who are supposed to testify at a powerful arms dealer's grand jury. One of the three has already gone down in a plane crash, along with his innocent co-pilot. That leaves his grieving wife and their business partner to bear witness to what they saw – but protecting them won't be easy. For one thing, the widow insists on making their aviation company's next flight. Their business depends on it. Only a quick grasp of the evidence can enable law enforcement to anticipate the Coffin Dancer's next move (like that nickname?). But even though he's psychologically twisted, the killer has an eerie way of eluding detection and, at the same time, penetrating protection.

The fact that you have a good idea who the killer is from a relatively early part of the novel isn't important either. There are twists aplenty in this fast-paced, nerve-wracking, gore-splattered thriller. Conflicts between the good guys, not only among the law enforcement types but also between them and the people they are tasked to protect, charge it up to the next energy level. Sachs suffers a fit of jealousy. Rhyme has one of those moments when he can't warn anybody on time about something he knows is going to happen. And of course – it's happened before – certain agencies don't appreciate the value of what Rhyme and Sachs are doing until it's tragically too late. As a special bonus, there's an agonizingly prolonged scene of suspense in which a pilot knows she has to stay above so many thousand feet because there's a bomb on board triggered by air pressure. Someone in this book has a fingernail chewing problem. I'm not saying it's you, but after scenes like that it might be.

This is the second of 14 Lincoln Rhyme novels by the author of three Rune novels (starting with Manhattan Is My Beat), three John Pellam novels (under the pseudonym William Jefferies), four Kathryn Dance novels (most recently Solitude Creek), and other titles such as The Devil's Teardrop and The Bodies Left Behind. The next book in this series, which I plan to request from my regional public library system, is The Empty Chair.