Broken Window

April 14, 2008
In bestseller Deaver’s entertaining eighth Lincoln Rhyme novel (after The Cold Moon
), Rhyme, a forensic consultant for the NYPD, and his detective partner, Amelia Sachs, take on a psychotic mastermind who uses data mining—“the
business of the twenty-first century”—not only to select and hunt down his victims but also to frame the crimes on complete innocents. Rhyme is reluctantly drawn into a case involving his estranged cousin, Arthur, who’s been charged with first-degree murder. But when Rhyme and his crew look into the strange set of circumstances surrounding his cousin’s alleged crime, they discover tangential connections to a company that specializes in collecting and analyzing consumer data. Further investigation leads them to some startlingly Orwellian revelations: Big Brother is watching your every move and could be a homicidal maniac. The topical subject matter makes the story line particularly compelling, while longtime fans will relish Deaver’s intimate exploration of a tragedy from Rhyme’s adolescence.