The Coffin Dancer

Jeffrey Deaver constructs a taut thriller with an unusual protagonist. Renowned criminalist Lincoln Rhyme was paralyzed in an accident but still matches wits with a clever, elusive killer. Joe Mantegna is in top form and takes listeners on a compelling chase. The pace is relentless and Mantegna drives home the full sense of urgency and intrigue. He handles Amelia Sachs, Rhyme's protÄgÄ, with sharp intensity and makes her telephonic communications with Rhyme believable. There's plenty of high-tech gadgetry and forensic detail, coupled with deft characterizations and psychological profiling. Mantegna and Deaver just won't let you turn this audiobook off. R.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Starred review from August 3, 1998
Deaver has come a long way since his Rune novels (Manhattan Is My Beat; Death of a Blue Movie Star), and the measure of his growth as a writer is on display in this taut sequel to the bestselling The Bone Collector, starring quadriplegic forensic specialist Lincoln Rhyme. Rhyme is called in to track down a contract killer, known as the Coffin Dancer, who has been hired to eliminate three witnesses in the upcoming federal trial of Philip Hansen. The trial is set to begin just 48 hours from the novel's (literally) explosive beginning. Rhyme and his beautiful assistant, detective Amelia Sachs, have just that much time to ID the Dancer and keep him from murdering the remaining witnesses. Yet Rhyme has personal reasons to track the Dancer, which come out in just one of the revelations and reversals that punctuate this thriller like a string of firecrackers. The pace, energized by Deaver's precise attention, never flags; and if the romantic angle is a little obvious (Rhyme's seeming concern for one of the Dancer's female targets sparks Amelia's jealousy), Deaver manages to renovate many of the hoariest conventions of the ticking-clock-serial-murder subgenre. Another original renovation is his Nero Wolfe-ish Rhyme--a detective who lives the life of the mind by necessity, not choice, and who thinks of everything but can't even pick up a phone without help. Trust Deaver's superb plotting and brisk, no-nonsense prose to spin fresh gold from tired straw. Literary Guild main selection; Doubleday Book Club featured alternate; Reader's Digest Condensed Book Club.