The Empty Chair

Jeffrey Deaver

Coronet, £5.99
ISBN 0 340 76749 9
Rating: ***

Lincoln Rhyme first appeared in Jeffery Deaver's best selling book The Bone Collector, which was made into a film in 1999. Now the criminalist makes a welcome return in Deaver's latest novel, The Empty Chair.

Paralysed from the neck down after an accident, Rhyme travels to Paquenoke County, North Carolina, with his protègè, former model Amelia Sachs, to undergo pioneering experimental surgery to repair his C4 vertebral fracture, which has left him able to move only his little finger. The pair are met by Sheriff Jim Bell, the cousin of an NYPD colleague, and within hours find themselves thrown into the midst of a particularly delicate case.

Sixteen year old Garrett Hanlon, known locally as the Insect Boy because of his fascination with all things entomological, has kidnapped two girls and bludgeoned another boy to death. Having secreted one of the girls away, Hanlon is now on the run with the other. With Sachs “walking the grid,” acting as his eyes and ears, Rhyme battles against time to find the boy and his prisoner.

Following a cat and mouse game in the marshland surrounding the Great Dismal Swamp, Sachs and her team from the local police force track down Garrett and his prisoner. However, this is not before they have had to contend with a group of locals, intent on hampering their work at any cost. Rhyme then finds himself pitted against his assistant when she takes matters into her own hands and goes on the run with Garrett. He must find out the truth about the sleepy town of Tanner's Corner and locate Amelia before it is too late.

Despite a somewhat slow start, the pace of the novel picked up eventually. In a recent interview, Deaver said that each of his books involves up to eight months of planning before any of it gets written and this is believable: the twists and turns in The Empty Chair will keep you hooked right through. As well as tackling three broad scientific areas—medicine, psychology, and entomology—Deaver also makes Rhyme and Sachs a refreshingly unusual duo. Their relationship, which is principally conducted on a psychological level because of Rhyme's disability, is also largely unspoken. Whatever the outcome of his surgery, I suspect the pair are here to stay.

Helen Barratt, third year medical student, Imperial College School of Medicine


studentBMJ 2001;09:357-398 October ISSN 0966-6494