Rating: 
Summary: A Chinese Ship Filled with Illegals and a Killer...
Review: My first from Mr. Deaver and this series. Filled with action and suspense, this one delivers! I was pleased to see that the paralyzed lead detective shows that his disability will not slow him down on order to track down a sadistic killer bent on murdering an entire ship full of illegal Chinese immigrants.The main character, a disabled criminologist named Lincoln Rhyme and his beautiful protege Amelia Sachs must track down a Chinese ship headed for New York City carrying over two dozen illegals.
The problem? The ship is run by notorious human smuggler and brutal killer known as the 'Ghost'.
When the Ghost's capture goes horribly wrong, the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service mut do the immpossible...find him before he tracks down the surviving two familes from the ill-fated ship.
Finding the families will be tricky as they have vanished in the labryinth known as Chinatown deep in New York City. Over the next tense 48 hours, Amelia is on a race against the clock while Lincoln guides her from afar. She forms an unusual alliance with one of the immigrants that may have bad consequences in her relationship with partner and lover Rhyme.
Very tense and action-packed. Also very different from what I've read, not the usual fare here. Some really good plot twists and a surprise. I was completely pulled in! Kudos to Mr. Deaver for a great getaway and a very unique look into the world of human smuggling and immigration... Tracy Talley~@
Rating:
Summary: When does the movie come out?
Review: So far my favorite Lincoln Rhyme novel. No re-hash-nopsis here but please pick this up if you would like to be entertained. Not only well researched, exciting, and entertaining but also transports the reader to Rhymes world.
Found editing questionables - same as Bone Collector - but will not blame author. They are few and the author has his heart well in the right place. Thouroughly enjoyable!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Sinks like a stone, stinks like a monkey
Review: This is the first book by Deaver that I have read. Apparently there are a couple of prequels to this novel involving the same main characters -- I will never read them.
Deaver has adequate style and a talent for pacing a mystery thriller. He also has some skill in character development; however, he only applies this skill to the secondary characters in this story. Perhaps the main characters in this story appeared so flat to me because I have not read the other novels in this series, but judging by their inconsistent behavior, bizarre motivations, and the melodramatic dialogue in this novel I doubt the other books could be much better. Worse than Deaver's hackneyed mystery cut-out-characters is his insistence that the reader be willing to accept the most unbelievable and unlikely situations for the sake of a dramatic situation or plot twist. Like many other second-drawer mystery writers, Deaver portrays such notable organizations as the FBI, INS, US Coast Guard, and the NYPD as ridiculously inept and corruptible. Nor has he made any attempt to research the actual policies and procedures that these organizations would follow in the situations presented in the story. Deaver also has a poor grasp on the politics of international economics. This is normally excusable in a mystery writer, but since Deaver sets Chinese/American economics as the foundation of his final plot twist the whole story comes crashing down in the final chapters of the novel.
A note to Deaver and other mystery writers: it is not a requirement for a great detective to be a pompous jerk and an abrasive know-it-all. It has been 115 years since Doyle introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes, and we have had 115 years of mediocre mystery writers plagiarizing Doyle's character. Please try to be original.
And also, if the final "twist" in your story is so complicated and so unbelievable that you must expend two chapters in trying to explain it, perhaps it shouldn't be there in the first place. I give this book a D.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible! This is Science Fiction, not Fiction!
Review: This was my first Deaver book...and my last.
The suspense factor was "ok", but the sections on scuba were ridiculous. A diver (with only 25 logged Caribbean clear-water dives) goes into a new NY/NJ wreck, alone (no dive buddy), on a single tank. And the Coast Guard approves this dive...laughable. Then once in the wreck, the diver goes down a dumbwaiter passageway measuring 2' by 2', without taking off any gear!!!
You might ask why I point this out...The above was 2 chapters, not just some passing reference, a very material piece of the story. If this one section [which I know something about] is that outlandish, what does that say for the other sections that I'm not as informed about.
Complete Science Fiction!!! You are better off reading tea leaves than this book.
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