Jeffrey Deaver, The Empty Chair
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Former lawyer Jeffrey Deaver is a prolific author of solid US crime thrillers. This one features his Doyle-like detective, wheel-chair bound quadriplegic, Lincoln Rhyme. Good appreciation by top mystery writer Michael Connelly.
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Like so many lawyers, Jeffery Deaver decided to give up one lucrative profession for another. He began writing murder mysteries in the late 1980s, but he he became known for the highly polished detective series with Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs. Lincoln is a quadriplegic with a sense for solving riddles; while Amelia is the woman that does the running round – often getting into danger. Together they make a great team.
Deaver became a bestseller with the Rhyme series,but along the way he has written other very successful stand-alone thrillers, a Bond novel and a new series with heroine Kathryn Dance. His work is among the best of contemporary crime fiction: well written, multiple plots, surprises that you don’t usually see coming and engaging characters.
This Lincoln Rhyme story is a fast-paced story with action and suspense. L.A. Police procedural writer and one of the most successful crime writers in America, Michael Connelly did a graceful appreciation for this edition. The book was issued in 2000 with a run of 85 numbered and signed copies.
Walter Mosley, Known to Evil
Ken Bruen, Priest
Rating by “Booklist” and BarnesandNoble.com on May 3, 2012 :
“This new Lincoln Rhyme mystery is as intricate, well written, and enormously satisfying as its predecessors.” – Booklist
“The Empty Chair is Jeffery Deaver at his best and most devious and is recommended, without reservation, to anyone in search of intelligent, high-adrenaline entertainment.” – BarnesandNoble.com
Rating by Michael Connelly on May 18, 2012 :
Extract from the Appreciation by Michael Connelly
“The book you are holding is the perfect example of where and how far Deaver’s art has taken him. Lincoln Rhyme. A character like no other, a character for the ages. Smart, conflicted, poignant, a guy as impatient and curmudgeonly as he is astonishing and breathtaking. A character you will be willing to ride with through any story, no matter how dark. That’s the key. A book is like a car. It’s going somewhere and you choose whether to get in and take the ride-if you trust the driver. But wait a minute; let’s take a look at this driver. Lincoln Rhyme can’t move. He’s in a wheelchair. A fancy Storm Arrow, yes, but a chair just the same. How can a character who can’t even move his own limbs move us? How can he make these pages turn with an urgency that keeps us up late at night, firing those synapses and feeling the cold finger of adrenaline coursing down the spine? Isn’t this against the rules? Yes it is, and that is the art of Jeffery Deaver. Or maybe the magic. Either way, it starts when the writer sits down and says rules be damned, I’m going my own way. When he decides to construct a protagonist who the rules say has no business being anywhere near the pages of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants thriller. It happens because Deaver knows the secret that the rules often hide. That it doesn’t matter if your character is stuck in a chair. It is that character’s embracing of what life dealt him and his indomitable fight against the forces that hold him down, whether it be his own damaged body or not, that ultimately empties that chair and allows him to take flight in our imaginations. That is the secret and that is what will always win the day when a writer battles for the reader’s trust and imagination. Late in this book Lincoln Rhyme stares at a ceiling from a hospital bed and ruminates on the two kinds of people in the world. He thinks of them as travelling people and arriving people, those who love the journey and those who love the destination. Rhyme thought he was one – you can figure out which – but suddenly he knows he is really both. It is a beautiful and poignant realization. Maybe my favourite moment in the book. And maybe that is because it equally applies to books and their writers and their readers. This book is undoubtedly both. The ride is perfect, the destination sublime. It is an accomplishment Jeffery Deaver has pulled off time and time again. His deft hand with character, his understanding of human nature and frailty are enormously present here. Lincoln Rhyme is our driver. Once again he is Deaver’s flashlight and he unflinchingly casts its focus into the dark corners of the human night”.