Book 18: The Empty Chair

I couldn't resist finishing Deaver's The Empty Chair. It features Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, who are dating, and the aide, Thom (or I guess you can picture Queen Latifah if you watched the movie of The Bone Collector!). The trio goes to North Carolina for Rhyme to have an operation which *may* reverse his quadriplegic condition a little bit.

But first, they get wrapped up in a local crime, with all kinds of local color. There is a swamp, and moonshiners, and an orphan, and cancer, and insects, and lots of plot twists. It's a fun one! No really graphic violence in this one. Also, I really don't think it's offensive to Southerners, even though every Southerner in the book happens to be kind of a jerk. In this book, EVERY character is kind of a jerk!

There's a great little moment when a black man from New York is saying, "Yeah, Mason here told me he doesn't like my kind." And Mason says, "Wait -- I meant Northerners!" And that's the truth.