|
It enables you to get to know and appreciate the characters so much more as they grow & develop throughout the books. His writing style changes completely with the "Lincoln Rhyme" books and if you like mystery & suspense, you will LOVE these. Jeffery Deaver is one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE AUTHORS. If you've read some of Deaver's earlier books/series, namely, the "The Rune Series" or the "The John Pellam Series", and did not enjoy them, please do not judge ALL of his books by those. This is book #4 in the series. He has so many twists & turns in his books, you never know what to expect next. Although each novel in the "Lincoln Rhyme Series" stands alone, you will probably want to start with the first book in the series, titled "The Bone Collector".
They apparently have never heard that a little knowledge can be dangerous, which is why the majority of complaints against acupuncturists are against these phony ones with MD after their names. Please, Mr. I'm a Deaver fan, and my wife is a doctor of classical Chinese medicine and practitioner of classical feng shui. Unfortunately, Jeff Deaver is no Lincoln Rhyme: he doesn't do his research. It attracts people desperate for extra income, teaching them a childishly-simplifies--and mostly bogus--interior decorating approach they dare to call "feng shui". It's not just that he doesn't understand it: whoever was advising him on it got it dead wrong in many cases (for instance, a feng shui master would never "trap" energy, as described in the novel). In the US, the powerful, monopolistic AMA has forced Chinese medicine schools to allow MDs to take a few hours of training on the weekend, and then call themselves Doctors of Chinese Medicine or acupuncturists.
This is a scam that's a cross between Amway and Scientology. And Deaver's feng shui consultant was almost certainly a member of the Black Hat cult from California.
He introduced the feng shui section with one of his characters admonishing someone for referring to it as "interior decorating", and then proceeded to describe it in that same interior decorating manner. It was invented by an Englishman about 40 years ago.
So, I was happy to see both of these valuable and fascinating ancient disciplines incorporated into a popular novel.and in what seemed to be a respectful manner. Making matters worse is the prevalence of the TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) school in the US, a dumbed-down version of classical Chinese medicine.
Deaver: do your homework next time. The Chinese medicine "insights" were superficial at best, and dangerously wrong at worst.
Deaver probably got his Chinese medicine knwoledge from some American MD who took a weekend course.
Catholics have their saints and the Chinese have their lessor Gods,but sometimes the result is a lot like carrying a rabbit's foot for luck.The modern Chinese are very modern and very rational.I liked the effort to get inside Chinese heads here, anyway;I picked up at least 3 Chinese curse words in this book.The crime-scene investigator theme is an interesting modern approach to detective stories too. Jeffery Deaver does a lot of research for these novels like The Blue Nowhere: A Novel.He still got Chinese that had a Charlie Chan fortune cookie feel to them.His Chinese are very like characterizations of Italian Catholics by protestants.Although he tries to get into the pagan mind of his Chinese snakeheadsmuggler, the failure is that the result isn't believable to me.
It goes with my rule this book is like 500+ pages where only 350+ are relevant and needed. That and the fact that the book took turns and had dialog that were unneeded and slowed things down ruined the book for me. I got 3/4 of the way through it and then put it down to finish two other books and didn't care what happened in this one. This is the first Deaver book that I have read, or rather tried to read. I will probably read another Deaver book, but not another Lincoln Rhyme based one. Somewhere in the middle the book bogged down and it could be just me but the character of Lincoln Rhymes annoyed me to no end. It started off well and I was excited for a good read. He came off as a know it all spoiled kid/puppet master.
The time frame of the book is approximately two days, making for a fast read through seemingly unsolvable clues. Unfortunately the charge misfires, not allowing The Ghost enough escape time. This time Lincoln has the assistance of Chinese cop Sonny Li, who posed as a "piglet" to try and nail The Ghost for his own country. along with most of its human cargo.
He chases the survivors to shore, running against time and the law.Listening in on the Coast Guard's seizure attempt is Lincoln Rhyme (from 'The Bone Collector', 'The Coffin Dancer', and 'The Empty Chair'), expert criminalist and forensic scientist. Otherwise, this is a great Lincoln Rhyme addition. I highly recommend reading the books in order - though each is a separate crime and can be read individually - because you get more out of the thread of Lincoln and Sach's romance by reading the books in order. You'll also get more out of the characters, especially secondary characters like Lon and Fred. Off the coast of New York during a heavy storm, the US Coast Guard is in pursuit of the Fuzhon Dragon, a smuggling ship from China carrying illegal immigrants desperate for life in America. Aboard the Fuzhon Dragon is human-smuggler (called "snakeheads") Kwan Ang, also known as Gui The Ghost. Now a paraplegic and confined to a wheel chair - able to move just head, shoulders, and one finger - Rhyme uses his brilliant mind and extensive experience, along with Officer Amelia Sachs, to solve crimes. before he kills the rest of his "piglets".
With the barest scrapes of evidence and information, Rhyme must piece together whether the Ghost is alive, and if so, where he is now. The Chinese cultural peeks are a welcome diversion from hard crime chasing. Enjoy. To me it breaks up the flow of the story, especially when it's reflecting back to one of the volumes I've already read. Called in on the Ghost case to work with INS, Rhyme has Sachs on the scene of the Fuzhon Dragon fiasco immediately, walking the grid for him. My only problem with this Rhyme book is that author Deaver pauses too much in explanation time.
Rather than allow the Coast Guard to catch and board the ship, The Ghost "scuttles" the ship by blowing it up. Li brings a lot of Eastern knowledge and some humor to Rhyme's rigid crime solving techniques. Lon Siellitto of the NYPD, and Rhyme's stiffly helpful aide, Thom. With a reputation of never being photographed, The Ghost now must make sure that all his "piglets", what he calls the immigrants, are killed so he cannot be identified. Working from his apartment with him are old friends; Fred Dellray from the FBI, Lt.
|
