Review - The Cutting Edge by Jeffrey Deaver

The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme)
Jeffrey Deaver
Hodder, 17 May 2018
HB, 434pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me an advance copy of this book.

This is a tense and cunningly plotted thriller set around the workshops and showrooms of New York's diamond district.

With Lincoln Rhyme and his associates, Deaver has created a magnificent ensemble. Based around the ex-cop's New York townhouse, which features a fully equipped modern forensics lab, the team support Rhyme who acts as consultant to the New York police, the FBI and also more esoteric law-enforcement agencies.

Rhyme may be quadriplegic but dominates the books through his leaps of deduction and understanding of forensic science. Very much a Sherlock Holmes figure - in places this book reminded me of Holmes's reading a man's entire life from the observation that he had mud on his shoes particular to a certain area of London - Rhyme nevertheless has a degree of humanity and empathy that, perhaps, the Great Detective lacked.

He needs all of it here. A serial killer is targeting newly engaged and married couples. Will Rhyme and Amelia Sachs come into the killer's sights?

This is a story that seems to be resolving fairly early. We see a killer at work, and surely it is it just a mater of time until Rhyme and his crew join the dots and catch them.

But. Things start to get... complicated. The book has a truly fiendish plot, continually seeming about to resolve but then only getting more complicated. Rhyme seems to be getting distracted, taking on private work for, of all people, a South American drugs lord. What's that about? And as the jewellery killer flits about Manhattan, other, older forces seem to be causing destruction as well.

It's a very enjoyable book, full of sharp turns, misdirection and relations. You have to watch everything, but trust nothing. Once or twice I thought Deaver was being sloppy with the story, then turned the page and kicked myself for missing what was really going on.

An enthralling mystery, lots of peril, a cast of well established and likeable characters - and a killer. What more could you want?

For more about the book, see the publisher's website here.