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Summary: ANOTHER DELICIOUS ROMP FOR LINCOLN & AMELIA!
Review: He's done it again! Deaver is the master of twists and turns and then, when you have just a few pages left, whammmmo! he does to you again! Another monumental twist...another chilling scene....turn the page...oh nooooooo! why...why did he do this to us.....but then...welll you've just got to read this phenomenal thriller for yourself! It was such a pleasure to revisit Lincoln and Amelia once again after such a long time....hmmmm, some interesting things have happened in the interim. Thanx, Jeffery, for such amazing books....keep 'em coming....fast!
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Summary: Lincoln Rhyme is back!
Review: Jeffrey Deaver brings back his forensic criminalist with his fiery sidekick Amelia and reels us in for a heck of a ride. This time the two are the fish out of water as Lincoln and company are in North Carolina hoping that an experimental procedure could give Lincoln some more mobility. Even before they can check in, the local police are asking for help in a kiddnapping case. They know who it is, they just want Lincoln's help in tracking him down, before the next victim disappears and before the last victim is killed. This case ultimately ends up being Lincoln versus Amelia as she believes that the suspect is innocent and breaks him out of jail to find the evidence that will clear him. As this book reaches its stunning conclusion, you will be clamoring for more Jeffrey Deaver novels. I just hope he writes them faster!Lady Pandora
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Summary: OUTSTANDING...A MUST READ
Review: Lincoln Rhyme returns. As Lincoln Rhyme is preparing to under go an experimental medical procedure, he is asked to help solve the murder of a teenage boy and the disappearance of two women. With the help of the local authorities, Lincoln and Amelia begin investigating. The main suspect is a teenage boy, an outcast, foster child with a strange fascination for bugs. As the pieces of the puzzle fall into place it becomes clear to Lincoln, nothing is as it seems, and no clues found are making sense. This is an OUTSTANDING novel...The pace is FAST, the characters (good and bad) are INTERESTING, and the writing EXCELLENT. The climax to "The Empty Chair" has one shocking surprise after another. Readers will not be disappointed with this novel, it is suspense fiction at it's best. Nick Gonnella
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Summary: THE ABSOLUTE BEST OF DEAVER!
Review: One of his best books! I love all of Deaver's books. Keep up the fabulous work Jeffery!
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Summary: Another winner by Deaver
Review: Lincoln goes to North Carolina for experimental surgery to hopefully give him more mobility. In a way he is a fish out of water in this new area not his familiar NYC but he soon learns his way around. As he did in The Bone Collector, Deaver picks a character's quirk, and in this one it is Bugs Boy fasination with insects, and makes it a intregal part of the story. As his usual, Deaver grabs your interest in the first chapter and doesn't leave you go till the end. Has Deaver's usual plot twists and turns. Enjoyed the developement of Lincoln's and Amelia's relationship even though most of the story they were apart. The action at the beginning isn't fast but the next 2/3 of the book makes up for it. Read it in 24hrs. and will reread as soon as all my friends get a chance to read it.
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Summary: Deaver keeps getting better and better
Review: Quadriplegic Lincoln Rhyme knows he is wheelchair bound for the rest of his life, but refuses to recognize any physical limitations. Instead he depends on his protégé Amelia to serve as his extremities on criminal cases they investigate for NYPD. She gathers the evidence that he analyzes. Together they have captured several felons. The wily criminologist is always willing to participate in any cutting edge research in the hopes that a way will be found to at least lesson his paralysis. Accompanied by Amelia and his caretaker, Lincoln travels to North Carolina so that he can be tested for a new medical procedure. However, before he even checks in, the county sheriff asks Lincoln to help them find a missing teenage girl who has been abducted. Lincoln finds the kidnapper and his victim. However, Amelia breaks the boy out of jail, leaving Lincoln with the need to find them before the authorities kill them. Jeffrey Deaver has written another compelling police procedural starring a powerful protagonist who rejects any notion that he is crippled. The audience will not pity Lincoln because they will admire his intelligence and fortitude. THE EMPTY CHAIR contains a fast moving plot and a wonderfully developed cast of heroes and villains. The romance between teacher and pupil is beautiful and a realistic triumph of the human spirit. Harriet Klausner
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Summary: Deaver does it again and has written a real page-turner!
Review: Remember the quadriplegic, expert criminologist, who has motion only in a small part of his neck and in one finger? What about his brilliant redheaded protégé who acts as his legs at crime-scenes? Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are back in the third installment of this mystery saga. After searching for an old-fashioned New York killer in The Bone Collector (1997) and tracking the tattooed Dancer through the streets of Manhattan in The Coffin Dancer (1998), the partners are now helping the local police in a North Carolina town find the kidnapper and murderer of two young women. When Rhyme travels to North Carolina to undergo an experimental and risky surgical procedure, hoping to increase his mobility, he has no idea that his talents as one of the nation's best crime-scene analysts would be called into play on a case. With physical evidence collected by Sachs at various crime-scenes, he must locate a hideaway cabin where a bug-obsessed teenage boy may be holding nurse Lydia Johansson. Rhyme and Sachs have no more than 24 hours to track the suspect Garrett Hanlon, referred to as Insect Boy by the locals, before he kills the abducted nurse. Insect Boy is not the only opponent Rhyme and Sachs must face. The local deputies are not keen to accept the arrival of New York cops on the scene and taking control of their case. The local deputies have dreamt of catching Insect Boy since his first presumed murder a couple years back, and are willing to do anything to catch him - dead or alive. When Sachs starts having doubts about the identity of the "real" murderer, she rejects Rhyme's assumptions and starts her own investigation. Now Rhyme, assisted by his aid Thom and a marine biology scientist, must work against his lover and most valued friend, in locating the abducted nurse before the local deputies. Deaver does it again and has written a real page-turner thriller. The plot is both well defined and well written. Allies become enemies, and enemies become allies. You will find new interpretations of the title The Empty Chair throughout the book. Suspense fans will be well served.
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Summary: Rhyme at his Best
Review: After reading all five Rhyme novels that are out right now, i can definitely say that The Empty Chair is Deaver's best novel in the series.
The novel finds handicapped criminalist Lincoln Rhyme in North Carolina with his protege and lover, Amelia Sachs, and his witty aide, Thom, to meet with a doctor for surgery that could potentially cure his quadripelegia. But Rhyme is soon contacted by a local sheriff, a brother of one of Rhyme's colleagues back in New York, who requests that Rhyme lends his expertise in helping to track down a young kidnapper known as "The Insect Boy", who has kidnapped two girls from the sheriff's community and killed a local athlete.
The first half of the novel deals with the hunt for the kidnapper and the missing girls, with Lincoln and Amelia working with local authorities who aren't all that pleased that a couple of outsiders from up-north are budging in on their case. The pace of the novel really picks up in the second half, when Amelia goes against Rhyme and helps the Insect Boy escape, believing that he was framed for the murder. From there, the novel has so many twists and turns that one should easily be able to finish this book in one sitting.
Everything about this novel is perfect. Rhyme and Sachs both develop brilliantly. The supporting cast is also one of Deaver's best, including the Insect Boy, the local cops, and a college student that Rhyme recruits as an impromptu forensics assistant. The Empty Chair really delves into the dark side of the deep south, and the dangerous, untamed swamp and wilderness where the pursuit of the kidnapper takes place is portrayed so well that readers will be on the edge of their seats as Sachs and the search team tread carefully through it, avoiding all sorts of traps that may lay in wait for them.
It doesn't get much better than this. 5 out of 5.
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Summary: The Empty Emotionless Boy, I mean Chair
Review: It's hard for me to take a book seriously when one of the main characters breaks a 16 year old out of jail purely because the jail escapee claims he is innocent, and the main character (Sachs) thinks he is telling the truth.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, that is the only reason why Sachs breaks him out of jail. I found the 16 year old (and every plot point where he is involved) annoying and very hard to swallow as a legitimate character - if only because of the author's portrayal of him.
With that said, the book had it's moments. I might have given it a better review had the 16 year old boy been cut out and someone else pasted in.
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Summary: Quadriplegic criminologist in Carolina
Review: Lincoln Rhyme is a quadriplegic ex-NYPD genius at interpreting crime scene evidence. He's in North Carolina for an operation, presumably at Duke, which seems rather a gamble given that every Carolinian he meets is a dim-witted country rube, except for an emotionally disturbed teenage entomologist suspected of multiple murder and kidnapping. He gets recruited by the local police who need the help of one of them clever New Yorkers. I don't think this book is going to do much for good relations between New york and North Carolina (I haven't read all the other reviews yet so I don't know if any Southern hackles were raised)
It's a police procedural techno-thriller using the usual devices to keep you on the edge of your seat. There are four young female characters to get in peril and rescued in the nick of time. (This is I believe known in the trade as the attractive-young-female-in-peril-who mistakes-the good-guys-for-the-bad-guys gimmick. It was started in the eighteenth century with "The Castle of Otranto" and Jabe Austen thought she'd killed it with "Northanger Abbey" in 1817) To be fair, Jeffrey Deaver is very good at this suspense business and at making us m-t-g-g-f-t-b-guys. In order to build up suspense he chops the narratice up between multiple points of view so as to end chapters on cliffhangers. Sometimes an omniscient narrator steps in to explain things about geography,history, insects, geology, plants, gas chromatography and quadriplegia. When he's not there the characters explain these things to each other
There are a confusing number of characters to begin with but is gets simpler as seven of them are shot to death. Two characters get stung to death by wasps. One character makes a joke (it's about quadriplegia).
I noticed a lot of plausibility problems and by the end I was doing a lot of "no-that-would-never-happen" but by then I was hooked. Actually the thing that seduced me into starting this book wasn't any of the gimmicks but the quiet poetic descriptions of coastal swamp scenery and realistic Bobby Ann Mason type atmosphere build-up on the first three pages.
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