“The Empty Chair” is the first book by Jeffrey Deaver that I’ve read. There is apparently a series of books by Deaver starring quadriplegic scientist/criminalist Lincoln Rhyme, who solves crimes by analyzing arcane bits of evidence and making deductions that would be the envy of Sherlock Holmes.

If you think that a quadriplegic detective is quite a stretch, you probably are too young to remember the TV show “Ironside,” starring Raymond (“Perry Mason”) Burr as a handicapped cop with a pretty female sidekick and a handsome male assistant. If you are familiar with “Ironside,” then it’s not much of a stretch to Lincoln Rhyme with his entourage of pretty assistant (Amelia Sachs) and gay personal aide (Thom).

Taking place more or less in the present, Lincoln Rhyme is a free-lance criminologist and scientist (“criminalist” as it repeatedly calls him in the book) who lives in New York City. In “The Empty Chair,” Rhyme travels (with Amelia and Thom) to North Carolina, where a surgeon has developed a procedure that may reduce some of Rhyme’s paralysis. The procedure is highly experimental and may result in Rhyme’s condition becoming worse — or possibly killing him — but he is willing to take the risk. Amelia Sachs, who has romantic feelings for Rhyme, is less sanguine about the operation.

The operation will take a few days to set up, so a nearby rural county sheriff stops to see Rhyme and ask for his help on a murder, kidnapping and possible sexual assault case. The primary suspect is a creepy teenager named Garrett, a loner who has a fetish for insects. Rhyme reluctantly takes on the case and quickly has a lab set up in the police station of the small rural town, where he starts analyzing dirt, stains and other odd bits of evidence.

In addition to the one young woman who was kidnapped and possibly sexually assaulted, Garrett grabs another young woman and drags her off to his hideaway through the Great Dismal Swamp. It’s clear that Garrett is a major creep, who uses his expertise with insects to kill a deputy and slow down his trackers.

However, nothing is quite what it seems in this backwater town. Although the evidence points overwhelmingly to Garrett’s guilt, twist after twist after twist turn the story violently first in one direction and then another. Through it all, Rhyme, Sachs and Thom endure their own assaults and insults, many of which could be quite lethal. Sachs, a former fashion model who is a world-class pistol shot, is grabbed for an open-and-shut murder with the smoking gun in her hands, while at the same time a couple of redneck creeps find the first kidnapped young woman and attempt to rape her.

These are just a few of the many wild swings this book takes, switching from scene to scene and character to character, always with a twist spinning the story off in a network of double-crosses and colliding interests. Rhyme does eventually somehow figure out the grand plan but there are at least a couple more twists yet to come.

In case you’re wondering, the title “The Empty Chair” refers to a psychological technique that gets a person to talk by pouring his/her heart out to a pretend person in an empty chair. As psychological techniques go, this one sounds particularly amateurish — but psychology is not my strong suit. Maybe this technique is a humdinger but I’d feel like an idiot talking to an empty chair if other adults were in the room.

“The Empty Chair” was entertaining but exceedingly twisty. I enjoyed the science that Rhyme used to test his samples and deduce facts about the case. I used a gas chromatograph at college many years ago, so I understood the principles behind Rhyme’s use of this important analysis tool. The one Rhyme used is several light-years newer than the equipment I used… I wonder if a modern gas chromatograph really does have a readout that identifies exact substances by name. Years ago, we had to analyze spikes on a sheet of paper to try to figure out the substances being analyzed.

There is some rough language in this book and some sexual situations, mostly in the minds of women who think a sexual assault is imminent. There are many creepy characters who use language and make threats that would easily banish them from the church of their choice. The book is definitely for mature teenagers and older.

I liked “The Empty Chair” but its many twists became tiresome after a while. Some twists — such as Sachs beating the murder rap — you will know are coming but many of the twists almost seemed like Deaver threw darts at the characters' names and decided to spin the story that way.

Although I could guess at a few things from the opening pages, there was no way that my puny mind was going to figure it all out until the very end, and there’s something to be said for that. But the book twists so often that it almost left me twisting in the stiff wind of disbelief, which blows strongly in “The Empty Chair.”

Overall, there were enough moments to keep it interesting and I can mildly recommend “The Empty Chair.” If you like exceptionally twisty stories, this is the book for you.


Recommended: Yes