The 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.

August 25, 2008
Dennis Boutsikaris’s reading of Deaver’s latest Lincoln Rhyme thriller is positively chilling. When the quadriplegic detective’s cousin is arrested for murder, it seems to be an open-and-shut case, as plenty of forensic evidence links him to the crime. But Lincoln discovers that the real killer is framing others for his killings by manipulating intimate computer information. A deadly game of cat and mouse pits Lincoln; his partner, Amanda Sachs; and the rest of his NYPD crew against an adversary who is consistently one step ahead of them. Boutsikaris’s reading is excellent, but he really ratchets the intensity when performing the passages told from the killer’s point of view. His delivery fully embraces the cold, calculating mind of the murderer, imbuing his seemingly dispassionate thoughts with an underlying sense of barely controlled rage and menace. A Simon & Schuster hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 14).