MagickCat's Full Review: Jeffery Deaver - The Stone Monkey: A Lincoln Rhyme...
In 1999, Ships full of human cargo had become a common phenomenon off the coast of B.C. Many of these "undocumenteds" were bused into my city and housed in the old jail up the hill all at taxpayer's expense. I did not honestly think of the Chinese migrants as people, I thought of them as criminals and burdens on our already crippled economy.
Jeffery Deaver's The Stone Monkey humanized what four years ago I didn't have the capacity to understand, this novel has left me feeling deservedly red faced and shameful.
On board the Fuzhou Dragon 300 miles off the coast of New York, Captain Sen Zi-jun has just learned his ship is about to be intercepted by the Coast Guard. Had the Fuzhou Dragon not been chartered by a snakehead, had it contained legitimate cargo Captain Sen's troubles would be few. But on this voyage his ships hold contained two-dozen illegal Chinese immigrants, human cargo, and above two ruthless killers the snakehead and his bangshou.
Captain Sen has filled the immigrants with hope and promise of wealth in Meiguo, America the beautiful country. But now they have little hope of even making it to shore and when Captain Sen is sent below deck it looks as if the immigrant’s lives have already been added to the register of the dead.
The Fuzhou Dragon sinks but a few families manage to escape the deadly waters and the bullets of the snakehead. Though they have made it to the beautiful country they are now pursued by the snakehead know as the Ghost. Unable to prevent the sinking of the Fuzhou Dragon Lincoln Rhyme takes it upon himself to save the Chang and Wu families from the fangs of the venomous snakehead.
The Stone Monkey I believe is the fourth installment of Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme series. Having not read any prior Lincoln Rhymes novels or any of Jeffery Deavers other books, this was certainly a jump into unknown waters.
The "main" character, Lincoln is a quadriplegic forensics expert who relies on his love and "protegee" Amelia Sachs to be his eyes and ears at the crime scene. The relationship between Lincoln and Sachs is interesting at first as you aren't sure about Sachs fidelity or motivations. He guides her through the crime scenes but they really seem more like mentor and student than anything else to the new reader.
I'm not sure what sort of character development went on with Lincoln and Sachs in the previous novels, it is obvious they are close and I got a feel for each characters personality but ultimately I didn’t care much about either Lincoln or Sachs.
Lincoln Rhymes remained mostly inaccessible through out the novel, whether that is by design to show how the able bodies might perceive the disabled Lincoln or by author’s omission because we might have already known all there is to know about Lincoln in previous novels, I don’t know or really end up caring.
He's crotchety, intelligent and mostly just a spout for information about forensic terminology. The only time I really enjoyed reading about Rhyme was when he interacted with the Chinese Cop.
The Sachs character became annoying. I accepted that she was an ex-model turned cop, who loves speed and fast automobiles but when the novel called for an underwater scene and she just happened to be a scuba diver as well...I just rolled my eyes.
The Stone Monkey could have done without Sachs and Lincoln, I would have loved this novel had it been only the Chinese immigrants and the Chinese cop versus the Ghost. Jeffery Deaver wrote these characters in a way that yes I did end up caring what happened to them.
"They were the vanished, they were the unfortunate," they were the Chang and Wu families who had fled to America with such high hopes only to be slapped with the bitter reality that life in the beautiful country wasn't going to be a walk in the park. The Stone Monkey had me at the edge of my seat, hoping that the Changs would evade the snakehead. Mr. Chang a dissident in China had risked the lives of his family to bring them to America, though they had little choice you begin to feel Mr. Changs regret building, would they have been better off having never left China?
The dynamics between Chang, Chang’s elderly father and Chang's son are fascinating. You have Chang representing rebellion against Communist China, the son representing rebellion against his father and the grandfather representing the traditional values of family, which ultimately binds all three generations together.
Even while this family is running you sense the conflict between father and son, this is something Mr. Chang cannot first understand. Why didn't his son respect him?
The Chinese cop is also a colourful character, and to be straightforward more interesting than Lincoln Rhyme. He is better matched against the cruel snakehead, even with his broken English and initial lack of American ethics.
As for the snakehead, wow. There are few fictional characters that are actually deserving of the title villain. The Ghost is a ruthless and intelligent killer. The Ghost is the true embodiment of a snake's head. His total disregard for the humans he calls ju-jia piglets, will make you hate him. But Jeffery Deaver also makes you understand why he is the way he is. The author may even make you like him for a little while.
These characters really stood out and impressed me more than any of the cops or Lincoln Rhyme did.
The back of The Stone Monkey calls Jeffery Deaver "the master of ticking-bomb suspense" and I whole-heartedly agree. There are few detective books where you can't actually foresee what's going to happen next and read the next few pages only to find your deduction was right. With The Stone Monkey I was not just going through the motions and going "ok saw that coming what’s next?"
Deaver writes in such a way that you think you are going in one direction and end up upside down and looking sideways. One of the more lamer instances is when Sachs is trying to rescue one of the immigrants and ends up struggling against what both you and she thinks is a shark. For a few moments Deaver got me but I was glad the shark turned out not to be a shark, thus saving Deaver from a highly exaggerated eye roll.
I was able to read and enjoy The Stone Monkey without having read any prior Lincoln Rhymes novels. I wasn't lost in regards to the characters interactions with each other, but I definitely felt like I was missing something. The dialogue between characters is believable, though at times coarse. If you are expecting elegance you will probably be disappointed, cops sound like cops and gangsters sound like gangsters. The only other negative thing I could say for this novel is that I felt the end was too tidy; many loose ends could have been left up to the reader's imagination to fill.
The Stone Monkey reminded me that my own grandparents fled from a communist country and that my grandfather was a political criminal. Changs only crime was wanting freedom for his family. Sharing part of Chang's voyage in the filthy cargo hold of the Fuzhou Dragon and learning about the reeducation camp and torture he faced back in his homeland, if he was deported, made me understand the desperation behind such a voyage.
Forensics expert Lincoln Rhyme and his protge, Amelia Sachs, are recruited by the FBI to capture the Ghost, a homicidal immigrant smuggler whose next ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Mystery & Detective - General Fiction - Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, along with INS, are in hot pursuit of the criminal mastermind and internationa...More at Barnes and Noble
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.