The Kill Room
"..faultlessly written and presented, but I felt it lacked the killer punch that Deaver is renowned for. "
Synopsis:
Robert Moreno, an American citizen living in South America, is shot in the Bahamas by a sniper. The killing was commissioned by the U.S. government, who received a tip-off that Moreno was planning a terrorist attack on a U.S. oil company headquarters. But this intelligence was fatally incorrect: anti-American Moreno ordered a protest at the oil company, not an attack.
Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are drafted in to investigate. While Sachs traces Moreno's steps in New York, Rhyme travels to the scene of the crime in Nassau, where he finds himself on a dangerous path trailed by the sniper himself. As details of the case start to emerge, the pair discover that not all is what it seemed. Can they achieve justice and escape with their lives intact?
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Review:
Lincoln Rhyme has always been a favourite character of mine. He is pedantic, acerbic but still impossible to dislike. Over the years he has been struggling with his disability following an accident at work and has overcome obstacles and health issues. His relationship with Sachs forms a large part of this series of books, as do the friendships between these two characters and Siletto, Dellray and Ron the Rookie. But, and this is a very big 'but', I was very disappointed with 'The Kill Room' and I am sad to say I found this to be Deaver's worst book to date. It was espionage meets Come Dine with Me, with definitely too much emphasis on the cookery. I much prefer the forensic clues that Deaver's books work around but this plot was based more on Government departments that carry out special operations. As ever, the book was faultlessly written and presented, but I felt it lacked the killer punch that Deaver is renowned for. When killers were revealed I took it with a pinch of salt as nothing is straight forward in a Deaver novel, but I almost felt that it was somehow contrived and included because it was expected, not because it actually fitted in with the story. This latest certainly won't put me off returning to Deaver (who is one of the best living crime writers in my opinion) but I hope next time he keeps to his forensics and leaves the conspiracies to others.