(2006)Very good Rhyme mystery of the team's effort to find an apparent serial killer who leaves a clock at each of his victim's scenes. Turns out he was a vigilante of sorts who didn't really kill anyone or commit any crime but was trying to catch a crooked cop. This appears reasonable until the Watchmaker escapes their capture and it becomes evident he is planning a terroristic act. (PW)Deaver's twisty seventh Lincoln Rhyme novel (after 2005's The Twelfth Card) pits Rhyme, the quadriplegic NYPD detective, against a brilliant criminal mastermind called the Watchmaker. Assisted by his longtime partner, Det. Amelia Sachs, an expert at forensic analysis, Rhyme probes two bizarre murders linked by the killer's calling card¥a clock left at the scene. The Watchmaker, as an ominous poem also left at the scene suggests, is bent on executing eight more people in a variety of ways intended to prolong their suffering. Deaver cleverly alternates between the Rhyme/Sachs team and the Watchmaker and his assistant, heightening tension by introducing the next targets and humanizing them. Sachs loses some focus when she also has to probe a suicide that she suspects is connected with some corrupt brother officers. Deaver fans won't be surprised that the investigations overlap, or that the several apparent climaxes are building to something more, but even they will be hard-pressed to peel back all the layers of the cunning plot at work beneath the surface.

No. 7 in the Lincoln Rhyme series. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs chase a fiendish serial killer known as The Watchmaker, Amelia uncovers corruption in one of the city's precincts, and we meet a kinesics expert from the West Coast, who I suspect will be a recurring presence in further Rhyme novels. Nice touch, to provide a counterpoint for Rhyme's forensics. Deaver is fairly transparent---although he doesn't let you figure out what's really going on, you're usually pretty sure it's NOT what it seems to be at any given moment. After the first 100 pages or so, I wasn't falling for any of his authorial deceptions. I wish he'd leave out the whiteboarding updates, which he throws in at the end of several chapters. And I want to take my red pencil to every sentence that starts with "That was when..." or "It was then that..." Pretty good escapist stuff, just the same. ( )

Dos hombres han sido salvajemente asesinados durante una gélida noche de diciembre en Nueva York. Junto a sus cuerpos, el reloj que marcó susúltimos minutos de vida y una nota que promete nuevos y más feroces homicidios con el ciclo lunar como pauta. El criminólogo Lincoln Rhyme y la detective Amelia Sachs deben trabajar a contrarreloj para detener al responsable, un sangriento psicópata conocido como El Relojero, pero ella además se ve envuelta en un caso que podría sacar a la luz algunos oscuros secretos de su compañero de investigación.

I've really liked every Jeffery Deaver book I've read. I started with the Lincoln Rhyme books, and read most of them. This one introduced Kathryn Dance, who got spun off into her own series; I'm reading the first book of her series now, and it's wonderful, at least as good as the Lincoln Rhyme series, I believe.

I read this one a while back, and don't remember all the details, so I'll just say that if you like Jeffery Deaver's books, you won't be disappointed, and if you've never read the Kathryn Dance books, you'll be delighted at a new character that complements Rhyme very well. It would be great to read more with the two of them working together. But then again, it might stack the deck so much against the bad guys that there would be no suspense. ( )

Wheels within wheels, layers upon layers, as is always in Jeffery Deaver story. The abridgement is good--letting us see the layers without overwhelming us with repetition and too much detail. It didn't move us along with relationship between Lincoln and Amelia but it did give Lincoln a scare that things would be changing. Lincoln does not like change. Ameila is getting restless. What will come next? Maybe the next book will tell. ( )