Name: The Stone Monkey
Rating: 3.4 (10 reviews)
ISBN: 9781410400963

Jeffery Deaver

Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs have been recruited by the FBI and the INS to help perform the impossible: track down a cargo ship headed for NY with illegals aboard as well as "The Ghost." But when the capture goes wrong, Lincoln and Amerla find themselves in trouble trying to keep the two families that escaped alive in NY's Chinatown.

The Stone Monkey

Stone Monkey

Wynter

I went into this book not expecting to be blown away. I find that nothing that I've read from Deaver has yet compared to the first Lincoln Rhyme novel - The Bone Collector. The plot quality appears to be going slightly downhill, though far from jumping the shark. On the other hand, I was not looking forward to reading about Chinese gangsters and human trafficing. As I've mentioned before in my thriller/mystery reviews, I am not too fond of organized crime in my fiction. Give me a serial killer, or a butler with a grudge - anything that doesn't involve gangs and drug peddlers, - and I'm happy. Here, however, Lincoln and Amelia are on the hunt for a notorious snakehead from mainland China, who downs an entire boat carrying illegal immigrants to the USA. Yawn, next please.

Behold, I actually enjoyed The Stone Monkey, and enjoyed it even more than Lincoln's previous escapades in hicktown from the last book. I was surprised. Deaver has a talent to make his readers care about minor characters. Those one-book characters that are usually killed off in a thankless manner of redshirts actually have personalities. He also has a number of aces hidden in his sleeves, even if you think the action is done and resolved. I was on the edge of my seat a number of times. 

There were a few things that bothered me that I do have to mention:

1. I wish Deaver would stop making all Chinese sound like this.

 
I DO FENG SHUI FOR YOU. I CUT DEMON'S TAIL LONG TIME. 

Just because your characters are fresh off the boat, it doesn't mean they need to talk like Mr. Miyagi and endow the clueless white people with pearls of ancient wisdom. 

2. Amelia is too super badass cop for my liking. In real life she wouldn't be able to just jump red tape and do whatever she felt like doing (ie. diving with little experience against all safety regulations). There are specialized people in the police force that do these jobs, and some former patrol officer cannot ignore chain of command just because she works with a consulting detective now. 

3. I actually wanted to slap Amelia in this one, not once, but several times. She constantly breaks regulations and does stupid crap like revealing sensitive information to a civilian. I need this woman to smarten up. I also wish that Deaver would have taken more time before his push Lincoln and Amelia into a relationship. I find tension between to characters that are secretly attracted to each other is much more interesting to follow than outright romance (kind of like they spoiled X-Files by making Scully and Mulder a couple in the end).

Lincoln and Amelia are recruited to track down a cargo ship carrying two dozen illegal Chinese immigrants, as well as the notorious human smuggler and killer known as the Ghost. But when the capture goes disastrously wrong, Lincoln and Amelia find themselves in a race to stop the Ghost before he can track down and murder the two surviving families who have vanished deep into the labyrinthine world of New York City's Chinese community. Over the next forty-eight hours the Ghost ruthlessly hunts for the families while Rhyme, aided by a policeman from mainland China, struggles to find them before they die and Sachs pursues a very different kind of policework - forming a connection with one of the immigrants that may have consequences going to the core of her relationship with her partner and lover, Lincoln Rhyme.

The Stone Monkey

Reviews

Highlights