The Skin Collector
Review of the novel The Skin Collector by Jeffery Deaver
Published by Hodder in 2015.
Cost: £7.99
ISBN 978-1-444-75748-4 (Paperback Edition – 434 pages)
I am an avid fan of Jeffery Deaver, so I was surprised that I missed the publication of the hardback version in 2014. Deaver is a thriller writer that you can depend upon – excitement, action, puzzles.
The Skin Collector is another Lincoln Rhyme thriller and is an eagerly awaited story for the avid followers of the Rhyme investigations. In this story we follow a murderer that decides to kill his victims by injecting poison in an unusual way.
The story starts on Tuesday November 5th Noon, concluding on Tuesday November 12th 1.00pm. So we have a week of murders and thrills to entertain us. Although the reader soon knows who the murder is, or in this case unsub 11-5, as Deaver presents much of the story from the murderer’s point of view, Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs do not. As a quadriplegic Rhyme has little movement, mainly from the waist up, but in contrast to The Bone Collector, an earlier Deaver story, it has little impact on the murder investigation. In The Skin Collector we have a an individual that likes to sedate his victims with propofol (a short-acting anaesthetic) and then sets about inscribing a tattoo on them using poison rather than ink, resulting in a quick death. At first there seems to be no logic to the killings. The unsub is able to tattoo his victims at the crime scene as he has access to a portable tattoo machine (not tattoo gun as we are reminded in the enquiry) an unusual item that helps Rhyme in the investigation. As a reader we learn a lot about poisons and their origins. Deaver has obviously done his homework, and the rules that tattoo artists follow.
Deaver has entangled rather a complex story, and as he frequently does, runs a second crime investigation alongside the main story; at first there seems to be no logic to the two cases – but I don’t want to spoil the plot or the brilliance of Deaver’s story telling. What makes the story so readable is the descriptive details if the crime scenes, and in this case it is the underground passageways that run beneath New York, supported by a diagram or two, which on reflection reveal vital clues to the astute observer.
In an attempt to delay the progress of the investigation the unsub attempts to poison both Rhyme and Sachs in separate instances, but instead poisons one of the investigation teams’ leading police officers and takes him out of the investigation, a character that Deaver has used very successfully in other stories.
There are twists and turns that the reader must wonder how and why did that happen.
In the very last chapters Rhyme discusses the case as part of the second sub story and he reveals how he was able to deduce some aspects of the main story that resulted in a speedy solution to the case and it was here that I felt cheated as a reader as vital details had not been brought out earlier in the story, but welcomed an answer as to how Rhyme had solved the case and the story had suddenly changed direction.
I love the way Deaver divides the story into short chapters, in some cases two pages, as he switches between the unsub and Rhyme the forensic science investigator. But if I have any concern about The Skin Collector, it is the speed that Rhyme and his team are able to solve individual aspects of the murder investigations. I think Deaver realises this as he switches to the second investigation, slowing down the pace of the main story.
I have read most of Jeffery Deaver’s stories, captivated by his excellent writing style and I wonder if over time he has changed his approach to convey his thoughts to his reader. In this story he has used paragraphs that consist of a single word, the word conveying everything that is necessary at that point in time. He also expresses the thoughts that his characters are thinking, as unspoken words, but there for the reader, revealing the frustrations and anger they go through as they try to contain it within themselves. When I looked back at some of his previous books he has used this approach before, but it is very predominant in this story.
This is such a great story and one I found difficult to put down, reading late into the night trying to find a convenient place to pause. It is Deaver at his best. Rating: 5 stars
Dr James Sheppard
2 March 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment