Deaver deals detective drama a deathknell.... (The Vanished Man - Jeffrey Deaver)

Member Name: sparkymarky1973

Product:	The Vanished Man - Jeffrey Deaver
Date:	20/02/09 (58 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A lot of brilliant technical knowledge for fans of Penn and Teller-style illusions

Disadvantages: Plot is lacking credibility and villian is bit 2-dimensional

Jeffrey Deaver's Licoln Rhyme seems to have been around for ages and yet, here he is again in yet another crime-busting adventure thriller solving the most confusing of crimes and making the impossible become possible. Not bad seeing as how he is the foremost quadraprgic forensic scientist in the whole wide world; well, technically he's the only quadrapegic forensic scientist in the whole wide world but thats just being picky!

This time around, his nemesis is a prestigidateur; or magician to you and me. A master of the art of sleight of hand, his acts of diversion and distraction keep Lincoln and his partner in both senses of the word, Amelia Sachs, firmly on their toes and trying to second guess a man whose sole purpose in life is the perfection of making his audience look where he wants them to rather than at what he is doing. Twists and turns galore fill every page and yet there is an increasing feeling of de ja vu. The reader is almost compelled into thinking they have seen it all before; and rightly because, by now, they most probably have- whilst the plot is not a bad one, it fails to bring anything new to the table or present the reader with any new tricks- just new interpretations of old ones seen in many a Deaver novel before this.

The whole arch-nemesis angle is done much better in the later published Cold Moon which featured The Clockmaker. Though from the technical detail it is obvious Deaver has done his research, there seems to be too much being made of the author's attempts to surprise you and so, at times, credibility takes a bit of a back seat. The whole Sachs-Rhyme relationship thing is also slowly getting tiresome and, whilst Lincoln's disability was a novel and unique touch at first, by now even that feels a bit same-old, same-old.

I cannot help but wonder if there is much mileage left in Deaver's novels. Lately it seems that with each new one I pick up, I become more and more disillusioned. Newcomers to this author and series may well enjoy this but longer-standing fans I think will be beginning to tire of what was once a series with a lot of potential. A big problem now is that this is such a wealthy genre, that there is a positive slew of new writers emerging and authors such as Deaver cannot afford to get complacent. What could have been a good story here just has more twists than is probably nessecary. There are only so many times the bad guy can get miracuously away and only so many eventualities he could have prepared for! The further the novel went, the less I found myself able to believe in it!

Not his best by any means....

Summary: Try something earlier by Deaver!