I'm one of those people who will simply give up on a book if it can't holding my interest. Heck, I did exactly that with the alleged classic scifi novel, Stranger in a Strange Land - I set it down with less than twenty pages left to read and didn't pick it up again for maybe ten years. Still didn't like it when I finished it, either - but that's another story. Another book, to be more precise.

You see, I almost did precisely the same thing with Jeffery Deaver's newest Lincoln Rhyme novel, The Twelfth Card. All that made me hang in there to the bitter end was Deaver's well-deserved reputation for building suspense and running the reader through more twists and turns than a giant slalom course. And you know what? I'm pretty much glad I showed a little perseverance. Wanna know why? Keep on reading...


Geneva Settle almost died on a quiet weekday morning, saved only by innate wit and well-honed street smarts. A librarian at the African-American Museum where Geneva had been doing her personal genealogical research wasn't as lucky as she: he ended up dead. Enter the first-string forensics team, and a good thing. While at first glance the evidence seemed to support an interrupted rape attempt, the pieces simply refused to assemble themselves into a coherent whole. One big tip-off? the perpetrator left way too few clues for this to have been a crime of opportunity. We're talking a pro here.

With a highly organized, detail-oriented hired killer on Geneva's trail, it falls to quadriplegic forensic scientist Lincoln Rhyme and his team - led by his "portable," Amelia Sachs - to figure out the "who." And for once, Rhyme and company need to figure out the "why," which proves even tougher than the "who." Rhyme and his team identify Thompson Boyd, late of Amarillo, as the hired gun within twenty-four hours. But finding him - and finding out why a high-end hired killer was on the track of a skinny sixteen-year-old would take another day; a day that will be partially consumed by the team's investigation of a slightly older crime - 140 years older, to be exact. And Geneva just might not have that extra day.


Fans of Deaver's convoluted plots will naturally rejoice at the appearance of the latest novel in the Rhyme series. After all, the herrings are scarlet red, the plot twists are hairpin-sharp, and the characters are familiar without having become predictable. The illusionist Kara, introduced in last year's The Vanished Man, makes a brief but satisfying appearance, and the remainder of Rhyme's motley crew file through in turn. One side plot features a team-member's crisis of courage; a crisis that comes close to having deadly consequences. Through it all, Sachs - gorgeous runway model turned cop, still driving that rodded-out Camaro - continues to grow while remaining charmingly vulnerable. And Rhyme is, of course, his usual irascible self (a forensics curmudgeon?).

The selection of plot twists is truly delectable; Deaver having apparently learned a bit more about the art of misdirection from his research into prestidigitation for The Vanished Man. The character of Geneva is suitably stubborn and vexing - she is, after all, sixteen - and the level of research into a few oddball topics such as BEV and street slang reaches Deaver's customary level of excellence, even if the street slang is a bit out of date. However, there is one glaring omission from The Twelfth Card when compared to the rest of the Rhyme collection. Deaver has scratched the surface of half a dozen wildly disparate topics - post-Civil War history, current treatment of quadriplegia, the tarot - but there is no central topic. Unlike the culture of magicians in The Vanished Man or of hackers in The Blue Nowhere, there's no topic in The Twelfth Card that required months of a researcher's time. And I don't know about you, but that's one of the main reasons I read Deaver - to pick his brain for minuscule facts and arcane knowledge. I missed it this time...


That's not to say that The Twelfth Card is a loser. Even when he's not writing up to his potential - and everybody's entitled to slack off once in a while, after all - Jeffery Deaver still dominates his craft. I guess it's just a bit disappointing when you expect both entertainment and trivia from your mystery, and you only get entertainment. But look at it this way: with some writers, you don't even get the entertainment!



Other Jeffery Deaver books:
The Blue Nowhere
The Vanished Man (Rhyme)
Speaking in Tongues





Recommended: Yes