The Kill Room

The Kill Room - Jeffery Deaver 3.5 star read

He's back! Lincoln Rhyme is back and is hard at work with his coterie of crime-busters: Amelia Sachs - police officer, fellow criminalist and love interest; Lon Sellito - police detective and friend; Mel Cooper - forensic scientist extra ordinaire; police officer and budding criminalist, Ron Pulaski (fondly referred to as the "Rookie"); and, Thom Reston, Lincoln's health aide and general assistant. This time Lincoln and friends are asked to work a little outside the system to help determine if an innocent American was killed due to faulty intelligence. The culprit is the U.S. Government, or more specifically the National Intelligence Operations Service or NIOS. The initial problem: how do you catch a killer that hasn't killed on US soil and seems to have left little, if any, evidence? An even bigger problem arises when it appears that NIOS seems to become aware of the investigation and is willing to do anything to make it disappear.

The Kill Room is an amazing thriller read that provides a puzzle, wrapped in a mystery, surrounded by an enigma. Lincoln and friends must try to determine why Moreno was targeted, who the actual shooter was, and who leaked the information to the district attorney's office in the first place. The investigation seems to go nowhere fast as there is little physical evidence and the crime scene is more than a thousand miles away. Fortunately, Lincoln doesn't allow this to stop him from going forward. With the help of the NYPD computer crimes department, tips from a friendly FBI agent, and a trip to the Bahamas and help from a friendly Bahamian police detective, the investigation takes off with a bang. It literally becomes a game of cat-and-mouse as Lincoln and friends attempt to uncover the truth and aide in obtaining justice for a presumably innocent man, while staying one step ahead of NIOS and its operatives. Mr. Deaver provides amazing characters and plausible action that pulled me in from the first page to the last. Each book in this series seems to provide details and better insight into both Lincoln Rhymes and Amelia Sachs, as if a new piece of their personality puzzle is being revealed. The reader is kept guessing until the very end if the bad guys are really the bad guys or not.

The Kill Room provides a fascinating look into the shades of grey that obviously accompany any intelligence gathering operations. Details can always be interpreted in a myriad of ways, and sometimes those interpretations may lead to an incorrect conclusion. If you enjoy thrillers with a hint of government conspiracy and terrorism, then you definitely want to read The Kill Room.