The Skin Collector

Starred review from March 24, 2014
In bestseller Deaver’s outstanding 11th Lincoln Rhyme novel (after 2013’s The Kill Room), the quadriplegic forensic expert and NYPD detective Amelia Sachs track artistic killer Billy Haven, whose weapon of choice is a poison-injecting American Eagle tattoo machine. Haven’s seemingly random attacks in the labyrinthine underground areas of Manhattan leave each of the victims with a cryptic tattoo. Meanwhile, Richard Logan (aka the infamous Watchmaker of 1997’s The Bone Collector, the first book in the series), has died in prison, and Rhyme hopes to learn more about him by having someone attend his funeral. In the chess match between Haven and Rhyme that ensues, Haven counters Rhyme’s moves by taking the offense, while the endgame remains in doubt to the end. Deaver proves himself a grandmaster of the genre as each surprise leads to an even bigger surprise, like a series of reverse Russian nesting dolls. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents.

April 15, 2014
Even the genre's leading magician has his off days, as Deaver shows in this over-inventive yet highly derivative sequel to The Bone Collector (1997), The Cold Moon (2006) and quadriplegic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme's other adventures. Someone--OK, let's not be coy, someone named Billy Haven--has developed a new way to kill people as novel as it is repellent: poisonous tattoos. The first to benefit from Billy's artistry is aspiring actress Chloe Moore, lethally inscribed "The Second" in an underground passage beneath the boutique where she works. The NYPD's Amelia Sachs, Rhyme's longtime collaborator, foils an attack on visiting tourist Harriet Stanton, but IT whiz Samantha Levine, who isn't so lucky, ends up dying of a tattoo that reads "Forty." Why is an apparent fan of the Bone Collector scurrying through the elaborate system of tunnels beneath Manhattan and emerging to kill these inoffensive victims? Rhyme staves off boredom between the discoveries of the corpses by prepping Officer Ron Pulaski to masquerade as a mourner at the services for Richard Logan, the Watchmaker, after this connoisseur of timepieces and serial homicide suffers a fatal heart attack in prison. But a dead adversary can hold Rhyme's attention for only so long, and eventually he moves on to posing a highly pertinent question: Is his quarry yet another of the fiendish, interchangeable, solitary psychos who keep challenging his mettle, or are larger forces at work here? The author's many fans won't be surprised to hear that the answer is yes, no and sort of. Four false endings, which must be a record even for Deaver. It's reassuring to think that as the bad guys grow ever more ingenious, so does Rhyme. And indeed, so does Deaver, though not necessarily in such a good way.

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May 1, 2014
Someone is murdering people, killing them by injecting poison as he creates exquisitely detailed tattoos on their bodies. Lincoln Rhyme, the quadriplegic criminalist, and his team race against time to identify and stop the villain before the body count rises. To make matters more perplexing, the unknown perpetrator appears to have learned how to keep his crime scenes clean and evidence-free, from Rhyme's own writings (specifically an article about an old case involving a killer known as the Bone Collector). How do you catch a killer who's learned how not to get caught by the best criminalist in the business? Meanwhile, the Watchmaker, the fiendishly clever killer introduced in 2006's The Cold Moon (but referred to in intervening books), still haunts Rhyme, even after the man's death in prison, making it hard for the investigator to devote his full concentration to the murder case at hand. Another suspenseful and twist-filled entry in this always-exciting series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)