Rating: 
Summary: Full of Suspense
Review: It begins at a prestigious music school in New York City. A killer flees the scene of a homicide and locks himself in a classroom. Within minutes, the police have him surrounded. When a scream rings out, followed by a gunshot, they break down the door. The room is empty." Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are brought in to help with the high-profile investigation. For the ambitious Sachs, solving the case could earn her a promotion. For the quadriplegic Rhyme, it means relying on his protege to ferret out a master illusionist they've dubbed "the conjurer," who baits them with gruesome murders that become more diabolical with each fresh crime. As the fatalities rise and the minutes tick down, Rhyme and Sachs must move beyond the smoke and mirrors to prevent a terrifying act of vengeance that could become the greatest vanishing act of all.
Rating: 
Summary: Best Mystery Ever Written
Review: Jeffery Deaver has really outdone himself this time. Having read all the books in the Lincoln Rhyme series, I was already immediately tuned into both Sachs and Rhyme, and the introduction of Kara as a major character was really wonderful. I found myself really close to her as I read.
The plot itself if brilliant, and the research put into the book is quite evident. I love how you learn when you read his books, and with the theme in this one being magic, I thought It was absolutely amazing. The way he could change the plot at any given moment without making it seem choppy or broken up also enthralled me.
The fact that the book was written on a time deadline also made it exciting for me, and while it's slightly boggling how things could happen in a short period of time as it was, Deaver did enough explaining of the techniques to make it credible.
I wait anxiously for the next Lincoln Rhyme mystery, keep them coming, I say!
Rating:
Summary: A Roller Coaster Ride
Review: Readers go through slumps, just like baseball players. When that happens to me, I turn to Ed McBain or Stuart Kaminsky or Dick Francis, who never let me down. Jeffrey Deaver is rapidly becoming one of my old reliables.
Another similarity between Deaver and Francis is that there's an element other than the mystery. Francis's lead characters are steeplechase jockeys and movie directors and glass blowers; we always learn something new. In his Lincoln Rhyme mystery, the STONE MONKEY, Deaver took us into the world of Chinese people smuggling. In this one we learn about magicians.
A quick change artist murders a young girl at a performing arts school. Rhyme and Amelia Sachs peg the murderer "the Conjurer" who seems to be imitating Houdini and other great illusionists of the past. When Amelia visits a magic store, she is introduced to a young woman who goes by the name Kara, who will help school Amelia and Rhyme in the nuances of prestidigitation.
The Conjurer's next trick is to saw a man in half and that one is followed by the "Water Torture Chamber," which is interrupted in the nick of time, leading to an elaborate chase scene during which the Conjurer pulls off another quick change and gets away.
Deaver seems to revel as much in "misdirection" as the magicians he's writing about. Early on we learn who the Conjurer is, but we should have known better because nothing is as it seems in this roller coaster of a thriller.
Rating:
Summary: Jeffery Deaver Does It Again!
Review: Reading a Lincoln Rhyme/Amelia Sachs novel is never dull and always engrossing. The twosome is now seeking a magician, an illusionist, whose killing patterns reflect famous illusionist tricks. The misleading trails the killer leaves in seeking his ulitmate target and agenda twist and turn through another winner of a book! If you haven't met Lincoln Rhyme yet, I urge you to get acquainted.
Rating: 
Summary: Audio book best left unheard
Review: Some books don't abridge well, some do. I don't know if this one would, but this version is, simply put, awful.This is a terrific reading of an awful abridging of a book. I had to borrow (not wanting to throw good money after bad) the novel to find out how poorly this version was cut. Important plot details and character development seem to have been randomly eliminated, and the work as a whole suffers for it. Seemingly unrelated events pop up unexpectedly in what seems an amateurish manner. Deaver's writing deserves far better. I thought the reader, though, was great. He gave a good performance of what was in effect a horrible script. If the unabridged version is ever released on audio, try it, but don't waste money on this version. An editor somewhere at Simon & Schuster needs a new career. The person who OK'd the abridging needs to work in a different industry. Don't get this one.
Rating:
Summary: Abra-Cadabra
Review: The Vanished Man is the latest Lincoln Rhyme caper, and is one of the best.
It begins when two police women track down a killer in a music school to a room with no escape-no doors except the ones the cops are guarding, no windowns, no secret trap doors. But when they hear a scream and a gun shot, they rush in to find that the killer has simply vanished.
This is where Rhyme, Sachs, and the rest of the usual crew (including a brief cameo from a certain character from The Devil's Teardrop!) step in. They soon deduce that the killer is or was a professional magician, and dub him "The Conjurer".
The Conjurer is by far the greatest villain Deaver has created. He is the epitome of evil genius, having covered each loose end long in advance of his killings. His chapters are the best ones-italicized speeches to an imaginary "revered audience" and addressing himself as his stage name, "Malerick", The Conjurer's massive ego is at once despicable and deviously enjoyable.
Some reviewers have complained that the novel is "unbelievable". Well the theme of the frickin novel is magic, what do you expect? And Deaver still explains the secrets behind the different magic featured it book, so I really don't know what people are complaining about.
These explanations about magic usually come from The Conjurer or a new character- Kara, a magician's assistant enlisted by Lincoln to help with the case. Kara is by far one of the best supporting characters Deaver has created, and is extremely entertaining, especially in her subplots with her mentor and her sick mother.
The other subplots- Sachs applying for a detective position, and a case involving a white supremacist group that Roland Bell is working on, are both nice diversions in between the Conjurer's killings, and lend nicely to the overall quality of the book.
The only complaints i would have is that, even though Rhyme is more prominent in this book than he was in The Stone Monkey (when Sonny Li stole the spotlight from him) he is still a rather static character with little to no character development. And lastly, regular fans of Deaver know to expect a lot of plot twists, but there are so many twists that at times it borders on the ridiculous. Its somewhat exceptable, as the main theme of the book is magic, but sometimes the reader will laugh out loud at the insane number of plot twists, mostly involving the Conjurer's motives and intentions.
Overall though, The Vanished Man is an exhilarating excursion into the realm of magic. 5 out of 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Magic
Review: This is a fabulously entertaining book. The reviews about the unrealistic nature of the plot are complete nonsense and miss the point. This is mystery and entertainment at its best. I have read all of Deaver's novels and The Vanished Man was definitely one of the best.
Rating:
Summary: Misdirection at its best!
Review: This is the latest book of Lincoln Rhyme series. Usually, Lincoln unveils and outwits the tricks and perps in his really smart style. However, a seasoned magician appeared before his invisible revered audience and hid his tricks neatly. So, I couldn't fathom the real target of this murderous lunatic until the last mystery-solving narrative started. This was done by his "misdirection" techniques which led Lincoln to many wrong alleys that led to nowhere near to the aim of his perp. However, this setting diminished none of his great career as a criminalist.
Rating:
Summary: The Boring Man
Review: This one seems to be getting high praise, but I think those reviews must be from established fans of Deaver or the genre itself. I found this novel to be extremely boring. Yes, there's much research into forensics and the magic business, but the author tends to talk down to the reader, which I find annoying. One example would be the over explaining of the classic illusion "Sawing A Woman In Half." Is there really anyone out there who doesn't know the basic theme of this well-known magic effect? In what is otherwise very stiff text, Deaver attempts to make the characters sound more natural by throwing in way too many contractions ("or is" becoming "or's") from every character. Contrived and distracting. Ridiculous turns of events and cardboard characters who all sound alike seem to be par for the course these days, but beyond that I just couldn't find anything of interest here.
Rating:
Summary: An Engrossing Read
Review: This was my first book by Deaver. The plot was interesting due to the subject matter, namely a murderous magician. The book centers around a pyschopath magician who seemingly disappears into thin air post-murder. Rhyme and Sachs enlist a budding magician who assists them in tracking down the killer. Not without some interesting twists, at times this book seemed less like a book and more like a crime/drame television show.
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