Empty chair but not an empty read..... (The Empty Chair - Jeffery Deaver)

Member Name: eleanorofnaboo

Product:	The Empty Chair - Jeffery Deaver
Date:	02/11/01 (37 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: well known & likeable characters, only 594 pages

Disadvantages: lots of information to take in

Have you seen the movie “The Bone Collector”? I loved that movie and was delighted when I stumbled across other books starring the quadriplegic criminologist Lincoln Rhymes and his young assistant/partner Amelia Sachs.

“The Empty Chair” starts with Rhymes, his care assistant and Sachs pulling into North Carolina where Rhymes is going to have an experimental operation involving replacing part of his nervous system or spinal cord (I forget which!!) with a baby shark’s – this is hopefully going to give him more movement or at least more feeling. This may or may not work – he could come through, or he could die!

Sachs is a bit worried about this, and when a local police chief comes to them in the hospital for help Sachs persuades Rhymes that they could help out before the surgery (basically using delay tactics!). They need Rhymes, practically the world’s best forensic scientist, to help them find Mary Beth McConnell, who had been kidnapped by a young local boy…… known as the insect boy. They fear for her safety, he probably raped her, if not killed her. Not only that, but a local nurse, Lydia Johannson, who was taking flowers to “the spot” has also been kidnapped, and local boy Billy Staill was beaten to death.

Sachs & Rhyme take over the police dept and lead the man hunt through “The Great Dismal” swamps – which is all based on evidence found at the scene of the crime – for the boy. The boy, Garret Hanlon, is an orphan who is obsessed with insects and is known about the area for killing people using insects.

I don’t want to give too much away, as it will spoil the whole story if I do……

The book was very well written although as I already had an image of Rhyme & Sachs from the movie, I didn’t notice if their characters were described well or not! All other characters were suitably described and I fel
t like I knew them all. Not knowing anything at all about forensics, it all seemed really believable and it wasn’t taken for granted that you would know what any of the stuff was, it was all described in detail.

This was the second Jeffery Deaver novel I have read, and this one had a mention about characters in the other one I read! I would highly recommend them to anyone, although it was not quite as gripping as the Bone Collector was (I have not read that book, only seen the movie!).

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