The Bodies Left Behind by Jeffery Deaver
A fast-paced story that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat won the 2009 International Thriller Writers Best Thriller of the Year Award. The tone for this book is both suspenseful and violent which may not be appealing to all readers looking for action. Some twists found later in the story certainly make the reader realize that Deaver will not allow your assumptions to play out in the end.
Booklist Review
/*Starred Review*/ Deaver, who has written one excellent thriller after another, is such a good puppet master that he makes us believe whatever he wants us to believe, even things that are false, without telling us a single lie. He practices misdirection through dialogue: a character says something he believes to be true, and so we believe it, too, without questioning the assumptions on which the character is basing his statement. A perfect example of how this technique can be used to perfection occurs in Deaver's latest, in which Brynn McKenzie, a Michigan police deputy investigating a suspicious 911 emergency call, finds herself being pursued through the woods by a pair of killers. And when she meets up with a woman who is also being hunted, Brynn has two lives to protect, and precious few resources with which to do it. The novel, which in some places may remind readers of Barry England's Figures in a Landscape (1997), is vintage Deaver: tightly plotted, with plenty of right-angle plot twists and pitch-perfect dialogue. It's not until we're well more than halfway through the book that we even begin to suspect that we might have made some dangerous mistakes, accepted certain things at face value merely because the characters in the book sold them to us so successfully—but by then, it's way too late, and we are completely at Deaver's mercy. -- Pitt, David (Reviewed 09-15-2008) (Booklist, vol 105, number 2, p4)
First Chapter by Novelist
Jeffery Deaver biography and website
A fast-paced story that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat won the 2009 International Thriller Writers Best Thriller of the Year Award. The tone for this book is both suspenseful and violent which may not be appealing to all readers looking for action. Some twists found later in the story certainly make the reader realize that Deaver will not allow your assumptions to play out in the end.
Booklist Review
/*Starred Review*/ Deaver, who has written one excellent thriller after another, is such a good puppet master that he makes us believe whatever he wants us to believe, even things that are false, without telling us a single lie. He practices misdirection through dialogue: a character says something he believes to be true, and so we believe it, too, without questioning the assumptions on which the character is basing his statement. A perfect example of how this technique can be used to perfection occurs in Deaver's latest, in which Brynn McKenzie, a Michigan police deputy investigating a suspicious 911 emergency call, finds herself being pursued through the woods by a pair of killers. And when she meets up with a woman who is also being hunted, Brynn has two lives to protect, and precious few resources with which to do it. The novel, which in some places may remind readers of Barry England's Figures in a Landscape (1997), is vintage Deaver: tightly plotted, with plenty of right-angle plot twists and pitch-perfect dialogue. It's not until we're well more than halfway through the book that we even begin to suspect that we might have made some dangerous mistakes, accepted certain things at face value merely because the characters in the book sold them to us so successfully—but by then, it's way too late, and we are completely at Deaver's mercy. -- Pitt, David (Reviewed 09-15-2008) (Booklist, vol 105, number 2, p4)
First Chapter by Novelist
Jeffery Deaver biography and website
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