The Coffin Dancer
Authors: Jeffery Deaver
Tags: #General, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Psychological, #Police Procedural, #Police, #Serial Murderers, #Forensic pathologists, #Rhyme, #Quadriplegics, #Lincoln (Fictitious character)
LINCOLN RHYME IS MORE THAN
YOUR STANDARD NYPD
INTELLECTUAL FORENSICS
GENIUS. HE’S A CURMUDGEON IN
THE GRAND STYLE—FLYING SOLO
ON WITS AND BRAINS—MAYBE
THE MOST APPEALING CRUSADER
ANTIHERO SINCE TRAVIS McGEE.”
—THE WASHINGTON POST
“LINCOLN RHYME [IS] A
CRIMINOLOGIST SO
KNOWLEDGEABLE HE MAKES
KAY SCARPETTA LOOK LIKE
A TRAINEE.”
—DETROIT FREE PRESS
“DEAVER WRITES THE TYPES OF
THRILLERS THAT WOULD
CHALLENGE EVEN THE MOST
ENTHUSIASTIC ROLLER-COASTER
RIDER. ... HE CRAFTS PROVOCATIVE
OPENING SCENES TO DRAW
READERS IN, SEND CHILLS DOWN
THEIR SPINES AND FORCE THEM
TO TURN THE PAGES. QUICK,
UNEXPECTED PLOT TURNS ARE
GUARANTEED TO KEEP THAT
ADRENALINE PUMPING RIGHT UP
UNTIL THE FINAL PAGES.”
—CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
Praise for Jeffery Deaver
and His Heart-Stopping Thrillers
THE COFFIN DANCER
“Deaver ... is a master of ticking-bomb suspense. ... Rhyme, now a forensic consultant, is more relentless than ever. Especially when, as in his chilling new case, he has a personal score to settle.”
—
People
“Deaver revs up the already supercharged tension by cramming all of the action in
THE COFFIN DANCER
into forty-eight hours.”
—USA Today
“Revelations and reversals punctuate this thriller like a string of firecrackers. ... Superb plotting and brisk, no-nonsense prose.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Quick to the punch,
THE COFFIN DANCER
is diabolically packed with the good stuff: coverups, mystery, action.”
—Library Journal
“Fair warning to newcomers: Author Deaver is just as cunning and deceptive as his killer; don’t assume he’s run out of tricks until you’ve run out of pages.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Readers who like ‘insider information’ on police and FBI lingo will enjoy details Deaver adds to the dialogue.”
—
St. Petersburg Times
THE BONE COLLECTOR
A
People
Magazine Page-Turner of the Week
“A truly spell-binding mystery/thriller comes along only rarely but this one should be sold with a certificate for home-delivered pizza, an answering machine, and a pair of warm jammies. It is almost impossible to put down.”
—
The Dallas Morning News
“A page-turner.”
—
The Detriot News/Free Press
“A top-notch thriller.”
—
San Francisco Examiner
“[A] breakneck thrill ride.”
—
The Wall Street Journal
“Hard to put down, as Rhyme and Sachs make for endearing and perhaps enduring partners.”
—
The Orlando Sentinel
A MAIDEN’S GRAVE
“A stunner. ... Most readers will be losing their sleep over Deaver’s outsized thriller.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The shifts in the balance of power and testing the limits between predator and prey build crisis after crisis into this elegant siege thriller.”
—Daily Mail
(London)
“Outstanding, gripping, brilliant, spectacular, with heartbreakingly real characters, a plot with double-whammy twists. ... A great thriller.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Compelling suspense. ... A chilling web of madness and violence ... an all-night page-turner!”
—San Francisco Chronicle
PRAYING FOR SLEEP
“Scary, smart, and compulsively readable.”
—Stephen King
“Undeniably throat-clutching.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“The writing is superior, the plotting is delirious.”
—James Patterson
MISTRESS OF JUSTICE
“This is excellent entertainment.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Books by Jeffery Deaver
The Coffin Dancer
The Bone Collector
A Maiden’s Grave
Praying for Sleep
The Lesson of Her Death
Mistress of Justice
Hard News
Death of a Blue Movie Star
Manhattan Is My Beat
Writing as William Jefferies
Bloody River
Blues Shallow Graves
For orders other than by individual consumers, Pocket Books grants a discount on the purchase of 10 or more copies of single titles for special markets or premium use. For further details, please write to the Vice-President of Special Markets, Pocket Books, 1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019-6785, 8th Floor.
For information on how individual consumers can place orders, please write to Mail Order Department, Simon & Schuster Inc., 200 Old Tappan Road, Old Tappan, NJ 07675.
To the memory of my grandmother
Ethel May Rider
The sale of this book without its cover Is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
Copyright © 1998 by Jeffery Deaver
Originally published in hardcover in 1998 by Simon & Schuster Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN: 0-671-02409-4
First Pocket Books printing March 1999
10 9 8
I
6 5 4 3 2 1
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.
Cover art by Anita Kunz
Printed in the U.SA.
Contents
Too Many Ways to Die
.
10
chapter one
.
11
chapter two
.
14
chapter three
.
19
chapter four
26
chapter five
.
31
chapter six
.
38
chapter seven
.
45
chapter eight
49
chapter nine
.
55
The Kill Zone
.
60
chapter ten
.
61
chapter eleven
.
71
chapter twelve
.
78
chapter thirteen
.
84
chapter fourteen
.
90
chapter fifteen
.
97
chapter sixteen
.
104
chapter seventeen
.
116
chapter eighteen
.
120
Craftsmanship
.
127
chapter nineteen
.
128
chapter twenty
.
134
chapter twenty-one
.
142
chapter twenty-two
.
148
chapter twenty-three
.
152
chapter twenty-four
159