Jeffery Deaver - The Empty Chair

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Jeffery Deaver - The Empty Chair» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: Триллер, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

The Empty Chair: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «The Empty Chair»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

The Barnes Noble Review
May 2000
The Empty Chair is the third – or, if you count a guest appearance in the millennial thriller The Devil's Teardrop, the fourth – novel to feature Lincoln Rhyme, the irascible forensic genius who became a quadriplegic when a cave-in at a crime scene damaged his spinal cord beyond repair. The series began in 1997 with The Bone Collector, which was recently made into a so-so film starring Denzel Washington. Every Rhyme novel to date has been characterized by authentic forensic detail and wild, even extravagant plotting, and the latest entry is no exception. The Empty Chair may, in fact, be the single trickiest suspense novel published so far this year.
Unlike earlier volumes, The Empty Chair takes place outside of New York City in the bucolic but sinister environs of Paquenoke County, North Carolina. Rhyme – accompanied by his long-suffering physical therapist, Thom, and his beloved forensic assistant, Amelia Sachs – has just been accepted as a patient at the Medical Center of the University of North Carolina, where he is scheduled to undergo an experimental procedure that might increase the range of his mobility but might, on the other hand, result in his death. Shortly after his arrival, Lincoln 's plans are disrupted by an unforeseen emergency. Jim Bell, Paquenoke County sheriff, has trouble on his hands and needs Lincoln 's expertise.
According to Bell, a disturbed teenager – known, for reasons that become graphically clear, as the Insect Boy – has murdered a local football hero and abductedtwoyoung women. Convinced that the women have only hours to live, Bell asks Lincoln to examine the trace evidence found at the abduction site in the faint hope of pinpointing the kidnapper's location. Though he knows nothing about the physical composition of the surrounding area – he and Sachs, as he repeatedly comments, are "fish out of water" in the American South – Rhyme agrees to help. Once again using Amelia Sachs as his eyes and legs, he sets up an ad hoc forensic lab in a borrowed corner of the local Sheriff's office and goes to work.
This sort of scenario – a crazed killer, a race against time, a scattered handful of clues – offers more than enough drama to fuel any number of traditional suspense novels. In The Empty Chair, however, this same scenario is merely the first level of a complex, multitiered mystery that constantly confounds our most fundamental expectations. The first indication that The Empty Chair contains unexpected depths comes when Lincoln, flawlessly interpreting his disparate bits of evidence, locates both the Insect Boy (Garrett Hanlon) and his most recent victim (an oncology nurse named Lydia Johannsen) within the first 150 pages. At that point, Deaver throws away the rulebook.
After talking with Garrett Hanlon in the Paquenoke County jail, Amelia develops the instinctive sense that Garrett might, as he continually claims, be a victim, and that another unidentified killer might still be at large. In a moment of intuitive – and reckless – empathy, Amelia abandons her professional principles and escapes with Garrett, determined both to prove the boy's innocence and rescue the remaining victim, a local history student named Mary Beth McConnell. From this point forward, almost nothing that happens in The Empty Chair is even remotely predictable.
It would spoil too many of the carefully constructed surprises to reveal the plot in any more detail. Suffice it to say that the narrative – which seems, at first, a simple but effective chase story – broadens and deepens to become something stranger and infinitely more complex. Throwing a varied assortment of people and elements into the mix – a trio of Deliverance-style rednecks, an emotionally scarred cancer survivor, a revisionist account of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, an apparently deranged deputy sheriff, a pair of incipient rapists, the hidden motivations of a wealthy industrialist, and the tragic history of Tanner's Corner, a "town without children" – Deaver constructs an artful, entertaining melodrama that has much to say about the destructive consequences of uncontrolled greed.
If The Empty Chair has a besetting weakness, it is Deaver's relentless determination to dazzle the reader with his narrative sleight of hand, piling on an endless, constantly escalating series of shocks, surprises, and unexpected twists that might, in a lesser writer's hands, have become just a bit too much. But Deaver, as usual, is a consummate professional, and he holds it all together with the ease and assurance of a natural storyteller. Readers familiar with the earlier adventures of Lincoln Rhyme will be lining up for this one, which seems likely to attract a substantial number of new readers, as well. The Empty Chair is Jeffery Deaver at his best and most devious and is recommended, without reservation, to anyone in search of intelligent, high-adrenaline entertainment.
– Bill Sheehan

The Empty Chair — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «The Empty Chair», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

She glanced out into the corridor, where Cal Fredericks and Bryan McGuire were still engaged in their complicated verbal fencing match. Garrett's lawyer was clearly losing.

Sachs snapped the book shut. Hearing in her mind the doctor's words. The best thing you can do is to just spend some time with him.

Jesse said, "Say, might be a little hectic to go out to the pistol range. But you interested in some coffee?"

Sachs laughed to herself. So she'd got the Starbucks invite after all. "Probably shouldn't. I'm going to drop this book over at the lockup. Then I have to go over to the hospital in Avery. How 'bout a rain check?"

"You got it."

21

In Eddie's, the bar a block from the lockup, Rich Culbeau said sternly, "This ain't no game."

"I don't think it's a game," Sean O'Sarian said. "I only laughed . I mean, shit, was just a laugh. I was looking at that commercial there." Nodding at the greasy TV screen above the Beer Nuts rack. "Where this guy's trying to get to the airport and his car -"

"You do that too much. You prank around. You don't pay attention."

"All right. I'm listening. We're going in the back. The door'll be open."

"That's what I was gonna ask," Harris Tomel said. "The back door to the lockup's never open. It's always locked and it's got that, you know, bar on the inside."

"The bar'll be off and the door'll be unlocked. Okay?"

"You say so," Tomel said skeptically.

"It'll be open." Culbeau continued, "We go in. There'll be a key to his cell on the table, that little metal one. You know it?"

Of course they knew the table. Anybody who'd spent a night in the Tanner's Corner lockup had to've barked his shins on that fucking table bolted to the floor near the door, especially if they were drunk.

"Yeah, go ahead," O'Sarian said, now paying attention.

"We unlock the cell and go in. I'm going to hit the kid with the pepper spray. Put a bag over him – I got a crocus sack like I use for kittens in the pond, just put that over his head and get him out the back. He can shout if he wants but won't nobody hear him. Harris, you be waiting with the truck. Back it right up near the door. Keep it in gear."

"Where we gonna take him to?" O'Sarian asked.

"None of our places," Culbeau said, wondering if O'Sarian was thinking they were going to take a kidnapped prisoner to one of their houses. Which, if he did, meant the skinny kid was even more stupid than Culbeau thought he was. "The old garage, near the tracks."

"Good," O'Sarian offered.

"We get him out there. I got my propane torch. And we start on him. Five minutes is all it'll take, I figure, and he'll tell us where Mary Beth is."

"And then do we…" O'Sarian's voice faded.

"What?" Culbeau snapped. Then whispered, "You gonna say something you maybe don't want to say out loud in public?"

O'Sarian whispered back, " You were just talking 'bout using a torch on the boy. Doesn't seem to me that's any worse than what I'm asking – about afterward."

Which Culbeau had to agree with, though of course he didn't tell O'Sarian he may have a point. Instead he said only, "Accidents happen."

"They do," Tomel agreed.

O'Sarian toyed with a beer-bottle cap, dug some crud out from under his nails with it. He'd turned moody.

"What?" Culbeau asked.

"This's getting risky. Woulda been easier to take the boy in the woods. At the mill."

"But he's not in the woods at the mill anymore," Tomel said.

O'Sarian shrugged. "Just wondering if it's worth the money."

"You wanta back out?" Culbeau scratched his beard, thinking it was so hot he ought to shave it but then you could see his triple chin more. "I'd rather split it two ways than three."

"Naw, you know I don't want to. Ever'thing's fine." O'Sarian's eyes strayed to the TV again. A movie caught his attention and he shook his head, eyes wide, looking at one of the actresses.

"Hold on here," Tomel said, eyes out the window. "Take a look." He was nodding outside.

That redheaded policewoman from New York, the one so damn fast with the knife, was walking up the street, carrying a book.

Tomel said, "Nice-looking lady. I could use a little of that."

But Culbeau remembered her cold eyes and the steady point of the knife under O'Sarian's chin.

He said, "Juice ain't worth the squeeze."

The redhead walked into the lockup.

O'Sarian was looking too. "Well, that fucks things up a bit."

Culbeau said slowly, "No, it don't. Harris, get that truck over there. And keep the motor running."

"But what about her ?" Tomel asked.

Culbeau said, "I got plenty of pepper spray."

• • •

Inside the lockup Deputy Nathan Groomer leaned back in the rickety chair and nodded at Sachs.

Jesse Corn's infatuation had grown tedious; Nathan's formal smile was a relief to her. "Hello, miss."

"It's Nathan, right?"

"Right."

"That's some decoy there." Sachs looked down at his desk.

"This old thing?" he asked humbly.

"What is it?"

"Female mallard. About a year old. The duck. Not the decoy."

"You make that yourself?"

"Hobby of mine. Have a couple others at my desk in the main building. Check 'em out, you want. Thought you were leaving."

"Will be soon. How's he doing?"

"He who? Sheriff Bell?"

"No, I mean Garrett."

"Oh, I dunno. Mason went back to see him, had a talk. Tried to get him to tell where the girl was. But he wouldn't say anything."

"Mason's back there now?"

"No, he left."

"How about Sheriff Bell and Lucy?"

"Nope, they're all gone. Back at the County Building. Anything I can help you with?"

"Garrett wanted this book." She held it up. "Is it okay if I give it to him?"

"What is it, a Bible?"

"No, it's about insects."

Nathan took it and searched it carefully – for weapons, she supposed. Then he handed it back. "Creepy, that boy is. Somethin' out of a horror movie. You oughta give him a Bible."

"I think this is all he's interested in."

"I guess you're right about that. Slip your weapon in the lockbox there and I'll let you in."

Sachs put the Smith & Wesson inside and stepped to the door but Nathan was looking at her expectantly. She lifted an eyebrow.

"Well, miss, I understand you got a knife too."

"Oh, sure. I forgot about it."

"Rules is rules, you know."

She handed over the switchblade. He dropped it in beside the gun.

"You want the cuffs too?" She touched her handcuff case.

"Nope. Can't get into much trouble with those. 'Course, we had us a reverend who did once. But that was only 'cause his wife come home early and found him hitched to the bedpost with Sally Anne Carlson atop him. Come on, I'll let you in."

• • •

Rich Culbeau, flanked by nervous Sean O'Sarian, stood beside a dying lilac bush at the back of the lockup.

The back door to the place overlooked a large field, filled with grass and trash and parts of old cars and appliances. More than a few limp condoms too.

Harris Tomel drove his sparkling Ford F-250 up over the curb and backed around. Culbeau thought he should've come the other way because this looked a little obvious but there was nobody out on the street and, besides, after the custard stand closed, there was no reason for anybody to come down here. At least the truck was new and had a good muffler; it was quiet.

"Who's in the front office?" O'Sarian asked.

"Nathan Groomer."

"That girl cop with him?"

"I don't know. How the hell do I know? But if she is she'll have her gun and that knife she was tattooing you with in the lockbox."

"Won't Nathan hear if the girl screams?"

Recalling the redhead's eyes and the flash of the blade once more, Culbeau said, "The boy'll be more likely to scream than her."

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «The Empty Chair»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «The Empty Chair» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Jeffery Deaver - The Burial Hour
Jeffery Deaver
Bruce Wagner - The Empty Chair
Bruce Wagner
Jeffery Deaver - The Steel Kiss
Jeffery Deaver
Jeffery Deaver - The Kill Room
Jeffery Deaver
Jeffery Deaver - The burning wire
Jeffery Deaver
Jeffery Deaver - The Sleeping Doll
Jeffery Deaver
Jeffery Deaver - The Devil's Teardrop
Jeffery Deaver
Jeffery Deaver - The Blue Nowhere
Jeffery Deaver
Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card
Jeffery Deaver
Jeffery Deaver - The Stone Monkey
Jeffery Deaver
Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer
Jeffery Deaver
Jeffery Deaver - The Never Game
Jeffery Deaver
Отзывы о книге «The Empty Chair»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «The Empty Chair» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x