Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. And indeed, so does Deaver, though not necessarily in such a good way.Īnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Ī week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. It’s reassuring to think that as the bad guys grow ever more ingenious, so does Rhyme. Four false endings, which must be a record even for Deaver.

But a dead adversary can hold Rhyme’s attention for only so long, and eventually he moves on to posing a highly pertinent question: Is his quarry yet another of the fiendish, interchangeable, solitary psychos who keep challenging his mettle, or are larger forces at work here? The author’s many fans won’t be surprised to hear that the answer is yes, no and sort of.

The NYPD’s Amelia Sachs, Rhyme’s longtime collaborator, foils an attack on visiting tourist Harriet Stanton, but IT whiz Samantha Levine, who isn’t so lucky, ends up dying of a tattoo that reads “Forty.” Why is an apparent fan of the Bone Collector scurrying through the elaborate system of tunnels beneath Manhattan and emerging to kill these inoffensive victims? Rhyme staves off boredom between the discoveries of the corpses by prepping Officer Ron Pulaski to masquerade as a mourner at the services for Richard Logan, the Watchmaker, after this connoisseur of timepieces and serial homicide suffers a fatal heart attack in prison. The first to benefit from Billy’s artistry is aspiring actress Chloe Moore, lethally inscribed “The Second” in an underground passage beneath the boutique where she works. Someone-OK, let’s not be coy, someone named Billy Haven-has developed a new way to kill people as novel as it is repellent: poisonous tattoos. Even the genre’s leading magician has his off days, as Deaver shows in this over-inventive yet highly derivative sequel to The Bone Collector (1997), The Cold Moon (2006) and quadriplegic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme’s other adventures.

The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver