The Stone Monkey - Jeffery Deaver > Reviews (3)

“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape”

Nobody crosses the ghost, or rather nobody crosses the ghost and lives. As one of Chinas leading snakeheads - Kwan Ang - universally known as the ghost, is heavily involved in smuggling people from China to America, people so desperate to escape the communist rule smothering their homeland that they are prepared to pay exorbitant fees to secure a passage to America - or as they call it - Meiguo - the beautiful country. But on one turbulent crossing on the Fuzhou Dragon cargo ship an American coastguard intercepts the ship; faced with the prospect of capture and incarceration the ghost does the unthinkable and blows a huge hole in the aft hold below the waterline to sink the Fuzhou Dragon, human cargo and all. As the listing ship starts to fill with seawater the ghost escapes in a life-raft thinking that he is the only survivor, however the Chang and Wu families – ten members of the human cargo - had managed to escape the fatally damaged ship and make it to shore despite a menacing sea and a smattering of injuries and illnesses. Now with ten possible witnesses to the ghosts act of murderous sabotage on the ship, the Chang and Wu families must be found and killed, an act that the ghost is more than happy to perform.

Lincoln Rhyme is charged with tracking down the two illegal immigrant families before the ghost can get to them, but how do you find ten Chinese people who do not wish to be found for fear of being returned to their homeland, especially when they hide out in Manhattans massive Chinatown district. Harder still is the fact that Lincoln Rhyme is a quadriplegic and must rely on his partner and lover – Amelia Sachs - to walk the grid of any crime scenes and collect any evidence for him to study. With Sachs ability and Lincoln Rhymes brain – brilliant as it is on all things forensic – the hope is that they can find the two families and move them to safety in time. But with a wall of silence perpetrated by the American Chinese communities’ fear of the ghost, Rhyme faces an uphill task to save the families lives as he probes deeper into the underbelly of Chinese organized crime, especially when it seems the ghost will stop at nothing to silence all dissenters.

“Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius”

This is the fourth Lincoln Rhyme novel from Jeffery Deaver and the plots and characters are as fresh and exciting as they were in the first. Both diehard Lincoln Rhyme fans and those that are new to the character can enjoy this book as brief character outlines are given early in the book that will bring new readers up to speed without boring those that are familiar with the series. The Stone Monkey jumps straight to the action and this continues apace to keep pages turning and the story developing to good effect. Characters are either instantly likeable or boo hiss bad depending on who they are and what their role is in the story.

Forensic science and crime scene techniques are explained in detail but without swamping the reader with jargon or mumbo jumbo, a trick that Deaver is practiced and very good at. The casting of the central character – Lincoln Rhyme – as a quadriplegic is inspired and shows the man behind the disability and his brilliance in solving the crime. One factor I did find slightly confusing was the quick succession of Chinese characters the reader is introduced to near the start of the book, within the first twenty pages the Chinese names come thick and fast and it took me a little time to sort them out in my own mind and get a feel for the character behind the name.

“In life you need either inspiration or desperation”

That said this is still a fine book in the mystery and thriller genre and a great continuation of the Lincoln Rhyme series. The book switches between American and Chinese cultures to show the differences in glorious detail and the struggles of the Chang and Wu families as the battle against the odds and the ghost to set up home in their new country of choice. Four stars out of five from me with just the right measure of anticipation stirred within for the next story in the series.

www.jefferydeaver.com
432 Pages
ISBN:- 0340734019
£5.59 from Amazon.co.uk in Paperback