The Broken Window
Thank you Amazon for the picture
“Alice Sanderson was not a wealthy woman by Manhattan standards but she’d invested well and indulged her true passion. She’d followed the career of Prescott, a painter from Oregon who specialized in photorealistic works of families—not existing people but ones he himself made up. Some traditional, some not so—single parent, mixed race or gay. It was next to impossible finding any of his paintings on the market in her price range but she was on the mailing lists of the galleries that occasionally sold his work. Last month she’d learned from one out west that a small early canvas might be coming available for $150,000. Sure enough, the owner decided to sell and she’d dipped into her investment account to come up with the cash.”
What to do what to do? I know lets read a book together! How about The Broken Window; sounds like something your parents talk about after the baseball went through the living room floor. However this is a new mystery novel written by Jeffery Deaver.
Deaver releases his eighth Lincoln Rhyme’s novel; he is an award-winning poet and journalist he has also written and performed his own songs around the country. He has been nominated for six Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, an Anthony award, a Gumshoe-Award and is a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader’s Award.
Rhyme is a forensic consultant for the NYPD and his detective partner is Amelia Sachs. They take on psychotic mastermind who uses data mining-the business of the twenty-first century-not only to select and hunt down his victims but also to frame the crimes on complete innocents. Rhyme is reluctantly drawn into a case involving his estranged cousin, Arthur, who’s been charged with first-degree murder. But when Rhyme and his crew look into the strange set of circumstances surrounding his cousin’s alleged crime, they discover tangential connections to a company that specializes in collecting and analyzing consumer data. Further investigation leads them to some startlingly Orwellian revelations: Big Brother is watching your every move and could be a homicidal maniac.
Lincoln Rhyme and partner/paramour Amelia Sachs return to face a criminal whose ingenious staging of crimes is enabled by a terrifying access to information….
When Lincoln’s estranged cousin Arthur Rhyme is arrested on murder charges, the case is perfect — too perfect. Forensic evidence from Arthur’s home is found all over the scene of the crime, and it looks like the fate of Lincoln’s relative is sealed.
At the behest of Arthur’s wife, Judy, Lincoln grudgingly agrees to investigate the case. Soon Lincoln and Amelia uncover a string of similar murders and rapes with perpetrators claiming innocence and ignorance — despite ironclad evidence at the scenes of the crime. Rhyme’s team realizes this “perfect” evidence may actually be the result of masterful identity theft and manipulation.
An information service company — the huge data miner Strategic Systems Data corp — seems to have all the answers but is reluctant to help the police. Still, Rhyme and Sachs and their assembled team begin uncovering a chilling pattern of vicious crimes and cover ups, and their investigation points to one master criminal, whom they dub “522.” When “522″ learns the identities of the crime-fighting team, the hunters become the hunted.
Full of Deaver’s trademark plot twists, The Broken Window will put the partnership of Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs to the ultimate test. The topical subject matter makes the story line particularly compelling, while longtime fans will relish Deaver’s intimate exploration of a tragedy from Rhyme’s adolescence.
Now let’s find a cozy place to curl up in and see if we can’t crack this case before we reach the end.
Happy Reading
Sarah