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A Maiden's Grave, by Jeffrey Deaver | |
 rior
to reading this novel I'd read (and
reviewed/discussed) five Jeffrey Deaver novels, all in his Lincoln
Rhyme series. Aside from those books, Deaver has
written a dozen or so other novels, all one-off thrillers with original
characters and stories that do not connect to each other or to his
ongoing Lincoln Rhyme series. A Maiden's Grave is one of the one-off
novels, and since I was curious about his other work, and since this one
had about the best reviews from Amazon.com readers, I picked it up from
the library a few days before my recent San Diego "vacation."It came in handy too, and I read the first 90% of it over two consecutive nights, until I paused for a couple of days after losing interest with about fifty pages to go. That's not a good sign in a thriller, if you're wondering. The novel wasn't awful, and Deaver's prose flowed as quickly as ever, making it a very fast read, but it was definitely the least-enjoyable novel by him I've yet read, and it's given me cause to strongly considering reading nothing else by him outside of the Lincoln Rhyme series. To the scores: The story doesn't suck, and the characters aren't bad, and there is some tension, and there were things that could be considered scary and suspenseful. It had all the elements of a successful novel, and I'm not sorry I read it, but it just wasn't very good. Oddly enough, you might enjoy it more if you've not read much/anything else by Deaver, since then it will seem fresher and more original to you. The characters were mostly original, as was the plot. The elements of the plot were not though, and I saw most of the twists and character betrayals coming well in advance, simply because those types of things and twists always happen in Jeffrey Deaver novels. I was surprised how unsurprising the novel was, since while he uses the same few tricks over and over again in his Lincoln Rhyme novels, they work there. I know that in every Rhyme novel the criminal will be a scheming genius, that he'll appear to have Lincoln and his team outwitted and beaten several times, and that Lincoln will make some brilliant deduction at the last instant to save the day. I still enjoy them though, simply because the twists and turns are so clever. In A Maiden's Grave there were not very many twists, the ones that came along weren't really all that clever, and they were also familiar. Unfortunately. The plot had potential too. The premise is that three merciless killers have escaped from prison and are on the run. Their car crashes into another car on a deserted road, and when the next vehicle to pass by is a school bus full of eight deaf girls and their two teachers, the convicts take them hostage and hole up in an old slaughterhouse. The police surround them, the FBI comes in, and the main character of the novel is a middle-aged FBI hostage negotiator, who, along with his team, attempt to talk the prisoners into surrendering and not killing any of their hostages. The convicts are merciless, their leader is cold and brilliant and deadly, and the deaf girls are terrified and helpless; or so it seems. The novel takes place over less than a day, with one tense phone conversation after another taking place between the prisoners and the FBI, as the HTs (Hostage Takers) demand a chopper and a pilot, and Arthur Potter, the FBI lead negotiator, tries to lie, bargain, and compromise with them to string things along until his rescue team can assemble, or he can get the HTs to give themselves up. Things are complicated by the remote location, the scoop-maddened media, and the scheming interference of another Deaver staple; rogue cops and/or politicians who charge into the fray and insist upon involving themselves out of idiocy, ignorance, or a desperate desire for publicity. The unblinking gore, the suggestions of truly horrible things that never quite occur, the criminal genius, the Judas among the good guys, and the other stuff that Deaver always includes were all there as well. The only thing missing were the plot twists. In all of the Lincoln Rhyme novels, there are at least half a dozen surprising twists and turns, as characters do unexpected things, bad guys trick cops, cops trick the reader, characters we thought were dead appear alive and kicking, and so on. His books aren't quite rollercoasters, but they do keep you on your toes and give you regular shocks. A Maiden's Grave didn't. Stranger yet, it didn't even try. This one was more of a suspense thriller, I suppose, with our intended horror at the thought of one of those poor deaf girls being hurt or killed was supposed to keep us reading as the "I'm going to kill one in an hour if I don't get my chopper." deadlines continually approached, looked carved in stone, and then were defused in some surprising way. This might have worked for some readers, and I guess it did, judging by the high scores this one has gotten on Amazon.com, but I was never really involved in the suspense of this one, and I didn't really care how it turned out. It was obvious to me all along that there was more going on below the surface than we (the readers) were being told, and I kept expecting more shocking developments to occur. Plus, I think Deaver made Lou Handy, the brains of the HT team, too ruthless and unpredictable. Deaver shows how cold and deadly Handy is very early on, but Handy seems so deceptive and prepared that I never really trusted anything he said. He might have killed all of the girls at any minute, just to fuck with the cops, or gone back on his agreed-upon deadlines just for fun, so I didn't believe anything he said and didn't invest much in their intended-to-be intense conversations. It was like playing cards with someone who doesn't care about the money and bluffs for the fun of it, folds with good hands, etc. Besides that, I thought the big twist, the one the whole novel was building towards, was telegraphed hundreds of pages in advance. This was probably due to my having read several other Deaver novels, so I've grown wise to his, "it will be the last one you would have suspected" trick. I suspected literally 250 pages in advance, and was therefore not surprised what happened, when it happened and how it happened. Even if I hadn't, this was one of those books where it appeared to be almost over, and yet there were like 50 pages left, so I knew more had to happen. I have the same problem with TV shows; when it looks like things are wrapped up and it's just 6:40, or it looks like they're nowhere near wrapping up and yet it's 6:52. Movies in theaters are fun for that reason, just because I don't know how much longer they're going to last, and I also enjoy books with appendixes and bonus chapters from other books after them, so I don't know if I've got 10 or 40 pages yet to go. I actually enjoyed the last 50 pages in A Maiden's Grave the most, simply because the action was faster, the characters were confused, the setting was different, and I didn't know what was going to happen next. The whole drawn out hostage situation wasn't ever that interesting to me, but the chase scenes and action stuff that came after it ended were very cool, and that's the only reason I'm even considering reading any more of Deaver's non-Lincoln Rhyme novels. He doesn't have the writing chops to pull off a suspense story in a static location with very little action going on, but he's very good at pursuits and action sequences and having characters think on their toes while crazy stuff goes on around them. And while A Maiden's Grave doesn't really play to his strengths as a writer, I can envision other stories that might. |
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