Don't Cry For Me Jeffery Deaver (The Devil's Teardrop - Jeffery Deaver)

Member Name:

Product:	The Devil's Teardrop - Jeffery Deaver
Date:	22/06/02 (12 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well written, Great plot, Great characters

Disadvantages: None

New Year’s Eve 1999, a madman opens fire with an Uzi in a crowded Washington DC subway, killing 23 people and injuring scores more.

The shooter, known as The Digger, melts into the crowd and disappears. Shortly after, a note demanding $20,000,000 is delivered to the Mayor. If the ransom isn’t paid the extortionist says, the Digger will strike again and again until he is told to stop.

In a bizarre twist of fate, the extortionist is run over in the street on the way to collect the ransom and killed. With no one left alive who knows the identity of the shooter or with the power to stop his murderous rampage, it is a race against time to catch the Digger before he kills again.

Questioned document examiner Parker Kincaid, a former FBI agent and single father now working in the private sector, is called in to examine the note and help with the hunt for the killer.

The following 373 pages are a tightly woven tapestry of suspense, horror, and twisty-turny bits that will make you gasp out loud.

I don’t want to tell you too much more about the plot of the novel, because I don’t want to spoil it for you. Suffice it to say that all is not as it seems and the plot rockets along like a rollercoaster, dragging the reader into a surprising, stomach wrenching succession of twists, turns, sheer drops and loops.

In my opinion, the denouement is a brilliant piece of sleight of hand that retains the element of surprise whilst remaining believable.

Before this, I had only ever read Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme books. I am a huge fan of the quadriplegic criminalist, so when I realised The Devil’s Teardrop had a new lead character, I was slightly sceptical.

It didn’t take long, however, to become absorbed in Deaver’s narrative. His descriptions are chilling, his characters are finely drawn and believable and his plot is intricate enough to satisfy without con
fusing the reader.

Parker Kincaid is a truly likeable character. His whole life revolves around, and is dedicated to, his two children. He has forsaken his FBI career to work from home authenticating historical documents so that he can be a full-time father.

Unfortunately, his involvement in the highly dangerous Digger investigation coincides with a vicious attempt by his unstable, alcoholic ex-wife to gain custody of the children. Deaver’s heart-warming descriptions of Kincaid as a loving and caring father mean that the reader becomes emotionally invested in the character. You begin to care about Kincaid and that makes the following action all the more exciting.

There is a gentle hint of possible romantic interest between Kincaid and FBI team leader Agent Margaret Lukas. Lukas is at first glance a tough, cold career woman, but she is hiding a tragic past – the loss of her beloved husband and son in an air crash. The romantic thread pulls tight under the surface of the narrative, hinting at a possible relationship until the final page.

I get the feeling that Kincaid and Lukas are likely to surface again as a couple in later Deaver novels, in the same way that Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs have.

The novel also has a supporting cast of interesting characters, including computer whiz Tobe Gellar and laconic and crusty FBI Agent Cage.

The first chapter of The Devil’s Teardrop is so gripping that I didn’t want to put the book down. It opens with a stark and horrific description of the subway shooting, which then segues into a picture of domestic tranquillity that is Kincaid’s home life. The juxtaposition of the two is truly unsettling and this sets the tone for the whole novel.

Set in the space of just one day, the last day of the millennium, the frenetic events take control of Kincaid’s carefully structured life, throwing both him and his family into danger.
><br>
But if the reader feels a real affinity towards Kincaid, the Digger and his master are so skilfully rendered by Deaver that they really do raise a shiver along the spine. The Digger is an incredibly emotionally and mentally damaged character, a truly chilling madman.

The mastermind of the crime, the extortionist who controls the Digger, is, you come to realise, a truly twisted genius and a pure sociopath. The reader is hard pressed to decide who is truly the most evil – the puppet or the puppet master. Ultimately, I was surprised to find I had some sympathy for the Digger character, which turned out to be much more than a two-dimensional bogeyman figure.

The “Devil’s Teardrop” of the title, in case you were wondering, is an unusual handwriting characteristic. It is the name for an unusually formed dot on top of a lower case letter I or j. Whilst most people form the dot by tapping pen on paper, or dragging the pen creating a dot with a left-to-right tail, the devil’s teardrop is formed by dragging the pen slightly upwards, creating a “teardrop” shaped dot. You learn something every day!

This book is a thriller in every sense of the word and I heartily recommend it. Deaver has a talent for unusual description, natural unstilted dialogue and inventive stories backed with solid technical crimescene information, which added together, make his novels very believable and highly readable.

The Devil’s Teardrop is published by in paperback by Coronet and is available from Amazon for £5.59.

Summary: