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Critiques (3)
Critique de Booklist
In the new Lincoln Rhyme thriller, the criminologist is stymied by his latest adversary, a serial killer who commits murder without ever getting in close physical proximity to his victims, and who uses the most innocuous, unsuspected weapons. He claims to be a crusader, issuing proclamations after each kill, but does he have other motives as well? As usual, Deaver juggles several plotlines here: the main story and a few subordinate stories (including one that involves the return of the ex-con, ex-cop, ex-lover of Rhyme's partner, Amelia Sachs). The plot twists are clever and unexpected, the dialogue is colloquial and natural, and the characters especially Rhyme, Sachs, and the killer, who contributes to the story via first-person narrative passages are vividly realized. Highly recommendable to fans of the series, and to any non-Deaver readers who appreciate a nice mix of plot and character. While there are some plot threads carried over from previous books, the novel can be read as a stand-alone.--Pitt, David Copyright 2016 Booklist
Critique du New York Review of Books
THE FINNMARK PLATEAU is known as a beautiful spot. "Isn't that just the sort of thing people say about inhospitable places?" reflects the antihero of MIDNIGHT SUN (Knopf, $23.95), Jo Nesbo's character study of a fugitive Norwegian hit man. Jon Hansen has fled Oslo for this desolate land above the Arctic Circle, trying to escape the wrath of his boss, a mobster known as the Fisherman. Working as his debt collector and fixer was an easy job - until Hansen botched a murder and found himself in the Fisherman's cross hairs. Although it follows too closely the plot of a previous book, "Blood on Snow," this forcefully written story of personal defeat, despair and salvation, translated by Neil Smith, sends a man off to lose himself in the wilderness - where he finds himself instead. Introspective and sensitive, Hansen is the polar opposite of Harry Hole, Nesbo's far more commanding series detective. After moving into a cabin in the woods with no plumbing or electricity, Hansen settles down to brood about his worthless life. ("I'm just a pathetic, weak fool.") But a few days of that is enough to make him more receptive to the locals. The most interesting are Mattis, a keen-witted Laplander who persuades him to attend a strangely pagan wedding where he drinks fermented reindeer milk, and a 10-year-old named Knut, who introduces him to his mother, Lea, an abused wife (and soon-to-be widow). Lea and Knut are members of a harsh religious sect that promises an afterlife of fire and brimstone for sinners like Hansen. "It's only a stone's throw from the drumming of a shaman and witchcraft to the Laestadians' speaking in tongues," Mattis observes. But to a man desperate for redemption (and a hard-boiled author in need of a rest), this forbidding land, with its peculiar customs, proves irresistibly seductive. DONNA LEON'S VENETIAN mysteries never disappoint, calling up the romantic sights and sounds of La Serenissima even as they acquaint us with the practical matters that concern the city's residents. In THE WATERS OF ETERNAL YOUTH (Atlantic Monthly, $26), Venetians are troubled by an aggressive new wave of African immigrants, the latest street hustles aimed at tourists and the "pharaonically expensive" engineering project meant to keep the lagoon from flooding. Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleagues are also afraid Italy might be losing its edge: The younger officers aren't nearly as willing as the older generation to bend the rules for a good cause. "Soon it'll be like working in Sweden," Brunetti predicts. And while political corruption may be as rank as ever, "compared to Argentina, we are living in Switzerland." But as a dutiful Italian son, the commissario is still a soft touch for a grandmother who begs him to investigate the near-drowning "accident" that left her granddaughter mentally impaired. It's a bittersweet story that makes us appreciate Brunetti's philosophical take on the indignities, insanities and cruelties of life: "Better to think like a Neapolitan and view it all as theater, as farce." LISA LUTZ HAS written a number of clever comic mysteries about the Spellmans, a family of screwball sleuths. In THE PASSENGER (Simon & Schuster, $25.99), she steps smartly out of her comfort zone to write a dead-serious thriller (with a funny bone) about a Wisconsin woman who dashes cross-country when her husband dies in a fall and she knows she'll be accused of killing him. The name of this fugitive is Tanya Dubois, but she sheds it for a series of noms de crime (and wardrobe changes and hair colors and getaway cars) when she's running for her life from unknown assassins. In a refreshing twist, she's not awfully good at disguising herself, so it's only when she's taken in hand by a rogue bartender, a woman called Blue, that Tanya/Amelia/Debra/Emma/Sonia/Paige/Jo/Nora has a real chance of surviving - once she helps Blue bury the husband Blue murdered. "Goodbye, Jack," the unrepentant widow says at his graveside. "Sorry how things worked out. But you only have yourself to blame." ALTHOUGH I WOULD categorically deny it if cornered, I secretly enjoy the various dramatic, even (soap) operatic developments in the lives of fictional sleuths. And there are plenty of these in THE STEEL KISS (Grand Central, $28), Jeffery Deaver's unsettling procedural mystery featuring Lincoln Rhyme. That brilliant quadriplegic consulting detective is no longer working criminal cases for the New York Police Department, which has distanced him from his colleague and lover, the homicide detective Amelia Sachs. In her absence, Rhyme has acquired a brainy assistant, Juliette Archer, also a quadriplegic and possibly a soul mate. At the same time, Nick Carelli, an ex-cop who was Sachs's previous lover, is out of prison and making an impassioned case for his innocence. These are the kinds of intrusions that would normally distract from the forensic detail for which Deaver's darkly witty series is noted. But here they serve to heighten the tensions of the plot and complicate the efforts of Rhyme and his troops to stop "the People's Guardian," a domestic terrorist who has been sabotaging (to stomach-churning effect) the mechanics of supposedly trusty equipment and appliances, from escalators and alarm systems to pacemakers and baby monitors.
Critique du Library Journal
In Deaver's 12th Lincoln Rhyme novel (after The Skin Collector), NYPD officer Amelia Sachs tracks a sick and twisted domestic terrorist with a grudge against capitalism. Vernon Griffith, the People's Guardian, has stolen a long list of products installed with a DataWise5000 smart controller and, using a Wi-Fi remote and cloud technology, triggers products to malfunction and thus maim or kill victims-stairs on an escalator give way, a microwave explodes, a transmission disengages, a circuit box electrocutes, a band saw blade loosens, a stove seeps gas, and a baby monitor shocks a child. After much methodical and ingenious sleuthing, Sachs and her mentor, the paraplegic criminologist Lincoln Rhyme, follow a circuitous route of evidence across Manhattan until they finally identify the killer and the rationale behind the accidents. But they lose his trail. VERDICT Fans will marvel at the creative manner in which Deaver incorporates current technological and societal trends into the plots of his thrillers-in this case, remote devices signaling smart controllers. [See Prepub Alert, 10/4/15.]-Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
