Garden of Beasts Book

As is the case with many in the US legal profession, Jeffery Deaver decided to switch one moneymaking job for another--and thank God he did (who needs another lawyer?), when he can produce books like Garden of Beasts. His Lincoln Rhyme crime novels, with their doughty quadriplegic investigator, have been consistently excellent, with only a touch of tiredness creeping in recently. Rhyme was a highly unusual protagonist, and the convoluted serial killer narratives were refreshingly innovative in a desperately overcrowded field. In such winners as The Bone Collectorand The Stone Monkey, Rhyme and Amelia (his police colleague) had their work cut out. But it was apparent that Deaver might be sensing imminent burnout when he came up with two new heroes in The Blue Nowhere: cop Frank Bishop and computer hacker Wyatt Gillette. And it seems this change of pace didn’t slake Deaver’s desire for the new; here he is changing direction again with Garden of Beasts, a period-set thriller that is as utterly different from anything he’s written as might be imagined--but quite as adroitly written. The setting is New York in the Thirties, and the protagonist here is hitman Paul Schumann, who ends up in police custody after one of his hits misfires. Schumann is given two options: journey to Berlin to terminate Hitler’s associate Reinhard Ernst, or end up in jail for a very long time. Guess which option Schumann chooses? Correct! His danger-fraught journey through a vividly created Berlin, as the preparations for the Olympics transform the city, has the pulse-raising energy of the Rhyme books--particularly as a canny German cop is breathing down Schumann’s neck. With its scarifying picture of a burgeoning Third Reich, Garden of Beasts is Deaver on top form; perhaps Schumann might be more fully developed, but few Deaver fans will complain.--Barry ForshawRead More